QUESTION With reference to the answers to Senate Questions 580, which states that confirmatory testing for H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b involved PCR testing followed by virus sequencing: for the specimen identified as A/Brown Skua/Western Australia/AS-26-1348-1/2026: what was the PCR assay/protocol used and the laboratory that performed the test, what was the primer and probe sequences and their supplier/manufacturer, and what was the Ct value/s obtained, including the relevant positive and negative control results; for the sequence uploaded to GISAID with accession number EPI_ISL_20479340: what was the sequencing method and platform used, on what dates was the sequencing commenced and completed, what was the genome coverage and sequencing depth, and what was the completeness and coverage of each of the eight influenza genome segments; what is the complete consensus nucleotide sequence for EPI_ISL_20479340 in FASTA format; the answer to Senate Question 580 states that the sequence for the first reported case of influenza A (H5N1), specifically A/Brown Skua/Western Australia/AS-26-1348-1/2026 was uploaded to GISAID (accession number EPI_ISL_20479340 ) but was not available through GenBank, BioSample, BioProject or SRA; what restrictions, if any, currently apply to accessing or downloading the complete sequence from GISAID: why has the sequence has not been deposited in an openly accessible NCBI repository, and when and where will the complete sequence be publicly accessible without requiring GISAID access; what, if any, are the accession number/s and location of the raw sequencing reads used to generate EPI_ISL_20479340; and if the data referred to in question 5 has not been made publicly available: why not, and when and where they will be released. ANSWER Please see attached file for answer.