Speaking to the media on Wednesday night, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said, We will only fight coronavirus with facts and evidence-based strategies, not fake news. Mail and Guardian news, 2 April, 2020.

South Africa stands at a crossroads in the fight against the new coronavirus — and winning the battle will hinge on the decisions we make now about how quickly and how broadly we begin to test for the virus. In a grim news cycle, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize's announcement yesterday that the country is evaluating rapid tests for the new coronavirus is something to celebrate. Bhekisisa opinion piece by Dr. Richard Lessells and Prof. Mosa Moshabela.

Durban - An infectious disease specialist says that although the world is much more prepared to deal with a pandemic than in previous years, African countries are still unable able to respond adequately to a respiratory virus like Covid-19.

South Africa's strategy to defeat Covid-19 is to lock down the country and scale-up testing to quickly identify people who may have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Health journalism by Adele Baleta for Spotlight 31 March 2020.

Südafrika hat die meisten Corona-Fälle in Afrika. Auch wenn die Zahlen denen in Europa noch hinterherhängen, warnen Experten vor einer rasanten Ausbreitung des Virus. Von Julia Jaki, Kapstadt, 27. März 2020

There is much we do not understand about the virus and how it will affect our bodies, especially after Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize said that 60% to 70 % of people could be infected by Covid-19. The Mail & Guardian asked different experts — including disease specialist Dr Richard Lessells, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) — for information about this coronavirus.

Together with the Big Data group of UKZN, we started a daily update of the data on COVID-19 in South Africa and a weekly update on cases, deaths and genomic data in Africa. All of the scripts for generation of the data is deposited open in repositories as all any data developed by our team.

Three thousand people have died in Italy as a result of Covid-19, with more than 35000 infected. Three weeks ago, the country passed the 150 mark for infected people. It took three weeks to get to that number. In South Africa, we passed the 150 mark on Thursday, two weeks after the first local positive test. Mail and Guardian, 19 March 2020.

The University of KwaZulu Natal's Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) boasts state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and scientific expertise and capacity not commonly found in Africa. This places our multidisciplinary team in the ideal position of being able to play a critical role in supporting the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team has placed all current research activities and services on hold to focus full-time on helping with this outbreak. Please help to fund it by donating to our activities here.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases can run hundreds of tests at the same time but ultimately the number of tests South Africa will be able to carry out for the new coronavirus depends on the machines, people and testing supplies available.

We developed an rapid bioinformatics tool for the identification and characterization of novel coronavirus genomes. The tool was released in January 2020 and published in Bioinformatics in February 2020 as an open access tool to help to characterise genomes of COVID-19 viruses.

In our February/March issue of 2020, we highlight our work on the current coronavirus outbreak. We published a software application for rapid identification and characterization of novel coronavirus genomes. Our quick response was lauded by the national and international media. In this issue, we also cover the award from UKZN vice-chancellor to Dr. Veron Ramsuran, launched a CRISPR-Cas9 laboratory and organized talks, exhibitions and training workshops.

KRISP was in the front and second page of Saturday Independent newspaper, including an article on how a reporter from nature has followed our hard work to produce and release the Genome Detective Coronavirus Tool in January 2020.

As news of the deadly Coronavirus spreads across the globe, a Durban man, teaching English in Hangzhou, describes the eerie streets of a city on lockdown and researchers at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) prepare for the potential of a Coronavirus outbreak in Durban.

KRISP Talks by Prof. Tulio de Oliveira (KRISP UKZN & CAPRISA), Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Outbreak: Genomics & Epidemiology. This page summaries resources for coronavirus COVID-19 in KZN and South Africa and internationally. It also present our work on the creation of a genomics and bioinformatics pipeline for fast and accurate analysis of coronavirus genomes. KRISP is bases at K-RITH building, Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, UKZN, Durban, South Africa.