The South African Medical Research Council extramural Bioinformatics Unit (SAMRCBU) based at the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) has started the 2022 calendar year with its calendar-packed schedule to support pan-African data analytics for pandemic response. Back in September 2021 in partnership with the WHO regional office for Africa the SAMRCBU set up a regional center of excellence for genomic surveillance and bioinformatics in Cape Town.

About 60% of participants are found to have high blood pressure. Pensioners in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga being screened for hypertension while they wait in line for their grants. The pilot project is by the South African Medical Research Council and SAMRC/WITS’s Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit.

World renowned South African scientists and infectious disease epidemiologists at CAPRISA, Professors Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim have been honoured in Vietnam as one of the inaugural recipients of a VinFuture special prize for their ground-breaking research on HIV prevention in South Africa.

Dr Phiwayinkosi Vusi Dludla, a Specialist Scientist within the SAMRC’s Biomedical Research and Innovation Platform (BRIP) has received the Research Excellence Award for Early Career/Emerging Researchers at the recent National Research Foundation (NFR) Awards.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) first reported in Wuhan China in December 2019, is a global pandemic that is threatening the health and wellbeing of people worldwide. To date there have been more than 274 million reported cases and 5.3 million deaths (World Health Organisation 2021). South Africa has borne the brunt of COVID-19 on the African continent, registering in excess of 3 million cases and 90 000 officially reported deaths (National Department of Health 2021).