Genomic sequencing and cracking the Covid code 

Genomic sequencing has been the key tool in identifying and tracking Covid variants, writes Jon Gertner

It’s typically the case that a pharmaceutical company needs samples of a virus to create a vaccine

Edward Holmes was in Australia on a Saturday morning in early January 2020, talking on the phone with a Chinese scientist named Yong-Zhen Zhang who had just sequenced the genome of a novel pathogen that was infecting people in Wuhan. 

The two men – old friends – debated the results.