Dr. Christian Happi is a professor at the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer Unversity at Ede, Nigeria. As a molecular biologist and a major scientific leader in Africa, Prof. Happi’s life-long research has contributed to the understanding of devastating infectious diseases—including Lassa fever and Ebola—and to combating the outbreaks. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Prof. Happi and his team responded promptly to amp up the speed and improve the technology for COVID-19 testing. Since Nigeria confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on 27 February, Prof. Happi and his team have been working in shifts to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 in human tissue samples received from the states. The team remains the main force for COVID-19 testing today and is en route to developing better diagnostic methods, thereby significantly boosting the capacity of Africa to fight against the disease. In early March, the Happi team also sequenced and assembled the first SARS-CoV-2 genome in Africa using state-of-art functional genomics technologies and tools. This enabled them to trace different lineages of the virus that arise from mutations, which has important implications for not only understanding how the virus evolves over time but also developing more effective vaccines.

To learn more about Prof. Happi’s coronavirus-related research, visit:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01607-y

https://qz.com/africa/1900397/nigerian-scientists-identified-seven-lineages-of-sars-cov-2-covid/