As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to spread all over the world, its causative pathogen, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is being monitored for the emergence of new variants and alterations in viral biology.
In the interests of cost-effectiveness and rapidity, amplicon-based sequencing of the viral genome has been used to provide a sensitive means of genomic surveillance. A new preprint, which was released on the bioRxiv* server, shows how this can be tweaked to make it a reliable source of genomic data by reducing the known potential for contamination.
