Haven't really moved to bluesky,but had to jump on to highlight this cool result from Joanne's team . We have been watching BA.3.2, a highly divergent COVID linage, closely. Wastewater was the first to find it in NZ, with enough resolution to know where it fits among lineages from Australia.

Last sequencing run of 2023 about to go on here @ ESR , time for a little review of what we achieved this year before we get stuck into analysing them... First a whole year of COVID genomics:

4.5 yo's most endearing trait right now is point blank rejecting any time I say I'm doing a bad job. -do we have any snacks? -no sorry, didn't put them in the swim bag: bad Dadding there -No. You're a good Dad. It's OK!

First little output from a very cool project with Max Bloomfield @ Wellington Hospital. Max is using Nanopore sequencing to help Infection Control teams spot transmission on or between wards. Max does the bulk of the work, and ESR is ready for any tricky bionfo problems: doi.org/10.1016/j.pa...

I guess our public covid report is going to be the thing that makes me finally send a message here... www.esr.cri.nz/our-expertis... This month has seen the kākāpō palette really come together as EG.5 became our most common variant. NZ and Aus remain really unusual in having room for XBC...