Lessons learned from New Zealand's ‘genomic journey’ through the COVID-19 pandemic

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2023-06-16 11:43

New Zealand

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New Zealand scientists at the forefront of our COVID-19 pandemic response say the lessons learned from our world-leading genomic surveillance programmes could be useful in the looming crisis of antimicrobial resistance, and in monitoring other infectious diseases. They say speed was key to New Zealand’s effective use of genomic data during the pandemic, but more training is needed so that people can effectively weave genomic data into their decision-making. On top of patient swabs and wastewater monitoring, they argue that the detection of diseases on surfaces, in the air, and within our animal populations is needed to build a genomic surveillance system with as few gaps as possible.