#WeAreSydneyID 

I’m Dr Rebecca Rockett, working here at the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us how pathogens can rapidly spread, causing illness and social disruption.
Like human genomes, viruses, bacteria and fungi have genomes as well.
In a similar way to human genetics, the genetic code of a pathogen allows us to understand a lot about the bug, its ancestry, and how it's infecting people.
By using advances in technology, we're able to uncover information on a scale not previously available.
Our researchers are analysing the pathogen's genome to accurately pinpoint how pathogens are spreading in the community, the effectiveness of drug treatments, and vaccines.
Thankfully, generating these pathogen genomes has recently become quicker and much cheaper.
I'm excited about how we can use these pathogen genome data to treat infections, limiting the disease burden and social impacts of pathogens spreading in our community.