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Professor Ian Goodfellow played a crucial role in helping to bring the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone to a close in 2014. His team's work helped inform technology used today in the majority of SARS-CoV-2 sequencing, which is keeping us safe in the current pandemic.

Professor Sharon Peacock explains the story behind the UK's world-leading SARS-CoV-2 genomics capability.

In late 2019, a new institute opened on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Its timing could not have been better - as the COVID-19 pandemic sent Britain into lockdown several months later, the institute found itself at the heart of the ̽��ֱ��’s response to this unprecedented challenge.

Cambridge researchers have shown how rapid genome sequencing of virus samples and enhanced testing of hospital staff can help to identify clusters of healthcare-associated COVID-19 infections.

Ian Goodfellow is no stranger to infectious disease outbreaks. In 2014 he left behind the safety of his Cambridge lab to join a taskforce fighting the hazardous Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. With COVID-19 now sweeping the globe, Goodfellow is once again applying his scientific expertise to finding solutions in real time.

Working in a lab as a basic scientist can often seem far removed from the real world. A year since the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak over, one researcher tells how the skills he learned working in a lab in Cambridge turned out to be surprisingly useful in fighting one of the most terrifying disease outbreaks of recent times.

Some of the final cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone were transmitted via unconventional routes, such as semen and breastmilk, according to the largest analysis to date of the tail-end of the epidemic.

Samples from the recently confirmed case of Ebola in Sierra Leone have been analysed at a new infectious diseases laboratory in the country, set up in partnership with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge in the wake of the epidemic.

A team of scientists, part of the international effort to curb further spread of the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone, has released its first dataset of the virus’ genetic structure online. ̽��ֱ��dataset will allow the global scientific community to monitor the pathogen’s evolution in real-time and conduct research that can lead to more effective strategies against further outbreaks.

An experimental drug currently being trialled for influenza and Ebola viruses could have a new target: norovirus, often known as the winter vomiting virus. A team of researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has shown that the drug, favipiravir, is effective at reducing – and in some cases eliminating – norovirus infection in mice.