Technological Barriers to Routine Genomic Surveillance for Vaccine Development Against SARS-CoV-2 in Africa: A Systematic Review.

The Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data, a public-access database for sharing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 genomic sequencing data, has received significantly less data from African countries compared to the global total. Furthermore, the contribution of these data was infrequent and, for some countries, non-existent. The primary aim of this review is to identify the technological barriers to routine genomic surveillance in Africa.

Can visual interpretation of NucliSens graphs reduce the need for repeat viral load testing?

Background: In Zimbabwe, viral load (VL) testing for people living with HIV on antiretroviral therapy is performed at the National Microbiology Reference Laboratory using a NucliSens machine. Anecdotal evidence has shown that invalid graphs for "Target Not Detectable (TND)" will upon repeat VL testing produce a valid result for virus not detected, therefore removing the need to repeat the test. This needs formal assessment.

HIV Viral Load Estimation Using Hematocrit Corrected Dried Blood Spot Results on a BioMerieux NucliSENS Platform.

While reporting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) viral load (VL) using dried blood spot (DBS) in the BioMerieux NucliSENS platform, application of the hematocrit correction factor has been suggested. In this cross-sectional study from the National Microbiology Reference Laboratory of Zimbabwe, we assessed whether hematocrit correction (individual and/or mean) in DBS results improved the correlation with plasma VL and prediction of VL non-suppression (≥1000 copies per ml in plasma). Of 517 specimens during August-December 2018, 65(12.