Professor Wolfgang Preiser, head of the Division of Medical Virology at Stellenbosch University's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS), was recently profiled in the prestigious journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The article traces Preiser's involvement in the discovery of SARS coronavirus in a German patient in 2003, as well as his contributions to the discovery of the Beta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa in 2021. Preiser is also head of the South African National Health Laboratory Services' (NHLS) Division of Medical Virology, and his laboratory made invaluable contributions to the sequencing and discovery of SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as the mammoth national Covid-19 testing effort in South Africa, particularly at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Read the The Lancet Infectious Diseases' profile article of Prof Wolfgang Preiser here.