In Australia, we have relied on genomic epidemiology (and associated derived parameters such as viral growth rate, reproductive number, and estimated sampling proportion) to inform public health policy changes 1. Genome surveillance alone may not be sufficiently informative to produce meaningful epidemiological estimates. ...we argue here that more genomes do not necessarily mean better results. Sustainable sequencing to track the COVID-19 pandemic Whilst public health and social measures, quarantine restrictions and vaccination have all been utilised in past and current pandemics, the COVID-19 pandemic is the first to employ genomic sequencing on a massive global scale. In both Australia and New Zealand, where the proportion of cases sequenced has been substantial, we have been able to use the data at the “macro” level (studying global evolution of the virus, emergence of VOCs and informing public health policies) and at the “micro” level (inferring local transmission networks and the impact of public health interventions on genomic clusters) 1,6–9.