Viral genomics has been critical to New Zealand’s successful public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Worldwide, genomic sequencing has been used as a key tool for limiting the spread of the virus, as well as for understanding its evolutionary origins and potential trajectories. By integrating genomics with epidemiological data, we have tracked local transmission chains and regional spread in real-time. Indeed, New Zealand’s COVID-19 elimination strategy heavily relied on the use of genomics to inform contact tracing, linking cases to the border and to clusters during community outbreaks. Here I will show how detailed genomics investigations helped advance our knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.