Centre to help with genomic surveillance

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday it will collaborate with the SA National Bioinformatics Institute to establish a regional centre of excellence for genomic surveillance and bioinformatics in Cape Town. The centre will initially support 14 African countries to strengthen their capacity to sequence and analyse genomic information. “Countries must step up surveillance because without genomic information, variants can spread undetected. You can’t fix what you don’t measure,” said WHO Africa head Matshidiso Moeti. /Tamar Kahn