Science Café SU presents: Developing a risk prediction platform for COVID-19 using sewage water
Prof Hugh Patterton in conversation with Prof Wolfgang Preiser and Dr Edward Archer from Stellenbosch University, and Dr Rabia Johnson from the Medical Research Council.
When will the third wave of COVID-19 infections hit us? What if we had an early warning system in place for all types of contagious diseases? In this Science Café Stellenbosch (19 May 2021), Prof Wolfgang Preiser and Dr Edward Archer from Stellenbosch University, and Dr Rubia Johnson from the Medical Research Council, explain how a national network of over 60 researchers from 26 institutions are working to establish a wastewater-based surveillance system for contagious diseases such as SARS-CoV2, the science behind the environmental fingerprinting of the disease, and whether the current system is ready to predict a third wave.
The talk is be moderated by Prof Hugh Patterton, Director of the Centre for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at SU.
More about the speakers
Prof Wolfgang Preisser is head of the Division of Medical Virology in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University.
Dr Edward Archer is a research associate in the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science at Stellenbosch University, and one of the coordinators of the South African Collaborative Covid-19 Environmental Surveillance System (SACCESS)
Dr Rabia Johnson is deputy director of the Biomedical Research and Innovation Platform (BRIP) at the Medical Research Council and an associate professor in medical physiology at Stellenbosch University.
Science Café Stellenbosch is an initiative by the Faculty of Science at Stellenbosch University to encourage public conversations about important scientific issues in a language that everyone can understand.