Click here for the workshop abstract booklet.

Click here for the full workshop agenda.

The first South African Workshop on SARS-CoV-2 Variants and Evolution takes place in St Lucia, South Africa, from 31 October to 3 November 2022.

This in-person workshop gathers leaders in SARS-CoV-2 immunology, virology, epidemiology, evolution, and vaccines to share the latest advances in Covid-19 research globally.

The workshop will get underway with a roundtable discussion about the future of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The roundtable panellists are SAMRC president and CEO, Glenda Gray; founder and executive director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI), Helen Rees; executive director of Africa Health Research Institute, Willem Hanekom; University College London’s Greg Towers; associate professor, University of Tokyo, Kei Sato; Miles Davenport from the Kirby Institute, UNSW; and Wendy Barclay, head of department of infectious disease, action medical research chair virology, Imperial College London.

The workshop is supported by the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, the South African Medical Research Council, Africa Health Research Institute, the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Cape Town, and CAPRISA.

The workshop steering committee is Prof Alex Sigal, faculty at Africa Health Research Institute; Prof Penny Moore, research professor at the University of the Witwatersrand; Prof Ravi Gupta, faculty at Africa Health Research Institute and professor of clinical microbiology, University of Cambridge; and Prof Wendy Burgers, associate professor at IDM at the University of Cape Town.