The ongoing pandemic spread of a novel human coronavirus, SARS-COV-2, associated with severe pneumonia disease (COVID-19), has resulted in the generation of tens of thousands of virus genome sequences. The rate of genome generation is unprecedented, yet there is currently no coherent nor accepted scheme for naming the expanding phylogenetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2. We present a rational and dynamic virus nomenclature that uses a phylogenetic framework to identify those lineages that contribute most to active spread. Our system is made tractable by constraining the number and depth of hierarchical lineage labels and by flagging and de-labelling virus lineages that become unobserved and hence are likely inactive. By focusing on active virus lineages and those spreading to new locations this nomenclature will assist in tracking and understanding the patterns and determinants of the global spread of SARS-CoV-2.

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The ongoing pandemic spread of a novel human coronavirus, SARS-COV-2, associated with severe pneumonia disease (COVID-19), has resulted in the generation of thousands of virus genome sequences. The rate of genome generation is unprecedented, yet there is currently no coherent nor accepted scheme for naming the expanding phylogenetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2. We present a rational and dynamic virus nomenclature that uses a phylogenetic framework to identify those lineages that contribute most to active spread. Our system is made tractable by constraining the number and depth of hierarchical lineage labels and by flagging and declassifying virus lineages that become unobserved and hence are likely inactive. By focusing on active virus lineages and those spreading to new locations this nomenclature will assist in tracking and understanding the patterns and determinants of the global spread of SARS-CoV-2.

We propose a novel, non-discriminatory classification of monkeypox virus. Together with the World Health Organization, we named three clades (I, IIa and IIb) in order of detection. Within IIb, the cause the current global outbreak, we identified multiple lineages (A.1, A.2, A.1.1 and B.1) to support real-time genomics surveillance.Monkeypox is a disease caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV) from the Orthopoxvirus genus in the family Poxviridae [1,2]. Since the first report of monkeypox virus infection in humans in the 1970s [3], repeated outbreaks have been reported periodically in Western and