Building capacity for public health bioinformatics in East Africa using a portable sequencing platform

George’s work aims to build capacity in viral outbreak surveillance and real-time portable nanopore sequencing, based on regional priorities.

George’s ‘Nanopore journey’ has developed over 4 or 5 yrs, with current focuses on metagenomic assays, amplicon sequencing of measles and rubella, and SARS-CoV-2.

They sequenced SARS-CoV-2 first in April 2020, shortly after the 1st Kenyan case was identified. ‘Now we have about 120 genomes that we have sequenced’.

Phylogenetic monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 in Kenya: from initial importation via international travel, now to local transmission.