COVID-19, the first pandemic in the post-genomic era

Abstract

The scale of the international efforts to sequence SARS-CoV-2 genomes is unprecedented. Early availability of genomes allowed rapid characterisation of the virus, thus kickstarting many highly successful vaccine development programmes. Worldwide genomic resources have provided a good understanding of the pandemic, supported close monitoring of the emergence of viral genomic diversity and pinpointed those sites to prioritise for functional characterisation. Continued genomic surveillance of global viral populations will be crucial to inform the timing of vaccine updates so as to pre-empt the spread of immune escape lineages. While genome sequencing has provided us with an exceptionally powerful tool to monitor the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, there is room for further improvements in particular in the form of less heterogeneous global surveillance and tools to rapidly identify concerning viral lineages.