Objectives: To describe the first isolation and sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 in Australia and rapid sharing of the isolate.

24The rapid sharing of sequence information as seen throughout the current SARS-CoV-2 25 epidemic, represents an inflection point for genomic epidemiology. Here we describe 26 aspects of coronavirus evolutionary genetics revealed from these data, and provide the first 27 direct RNA sequence of SARS-CoV-2, detailing coronaviral subgenome-length mRNA 28 architecture. 30The ongoing epidemic of 2019 novel coronavirus (now called SARS-CoV-2, causing the 31 disease COVID-19), which originated in Wuhan, China, has been declared a public health 32 emergency of international concern by the World Health Organisation (WHO) [1][2][3][4]. SARS- 33CoV-2 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA ((+)ssRNA) virus of the Coronaviridae family, 34 with related Betacoronaviruses capable of infecting mammalian and avian hosts, resulting in 35 author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.