The Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI) campus at the Tygerberg medical campus of Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa has launched the largest Genomics Facility in the African continent.
CERI has a fleet of sequencers, from multiple Illumina Novaseq6000s, Nextseq2000s, Miseqs and Oxford Nanopore Technologies GridIons. In addition, CERI has also fully automated liquid handlers ranging from Hamilton Star 96 to PerkinElmer Chemagic automated RNA/DNA stations. The facility allows the high-throughput production data of genomics sequencing as never seem before in Africa.
CERI genomics laboratory was responsible for the identification of Omicron variant in 2021. The laboratory has also expanded genomics to over 50 pathogens and has produced 1000s of human exomes and genomes.
CERI genomics facility has received the visit of the president of South Africa, H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, the Director General of WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the Vice Chancellor of Germany.
