Complete microbial genomes for public health in Australia and the Southwest Pacific.

Abstract Complete genomes of microbial pathogens are essential for the phylogenomic analyses that increasingly underpin core public health lab activities. Here, we present complete genomes of pathogen strains of regional importance to the Southwest Pacific and Australia. These enrich the catalogue of globally available complete genomes for public health while providing valuable strains to regional public health labs. Announcement Whole-genome sequence (WGS) data is increasingly important in public health microbiology (1–4). The data can be used to replicate many of the basic bacterial sub-typing approaches, as well as support epidemiological investigations, such as surveillance and outbreak investigation (5–7). The appeal of WGS data comes from the promise of a single workflow to process all microbial pathogens that can provide easily portable data that promotes deeper integration of surveillance and investigation efforts across jurisdictions. This promise is leading to a concerted effort to move microbial public health to a primarily genome-based workflow at numerous jurisdictions (8–10), including Australia (11).