PATH has announced the appointment of Prof. Fredrick Were MD, MMed, PhD as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors.

Prof. Were’s appointment was announced in a statement on PATH official website.

Background.

Using classical and genomic epidemiology, we tracked the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya over 23 months to determine the impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on its progression.

Methods.

SARS-CoV-2 surveillance and testing data were obtained from the Kenya Ministry of Health, collected daily from 306 health facilities. COVID-19-associated fatality data were also obtained from these health facilities and communities. Whole SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing were carried out on 1241 specimens.

Results.

HIV-1 transmission dynamics involving men who have sex with men (MSM) in Africa are not well understood. We investigated the rates of HIV-1 transmission between MSM across three regions in Kenya: Coast, Nairobi and Nyanza. We analysed 372 HIV-1 partial pol sequences sampled during 2006-2019 from MSM in Coast (N=178, 47.9%), Nairobi (N=137, 36.8%), and Nyanza (N=57, 15.3%) provinces in Kenya. Maximum-Likelihood (ML) phylogenetics and Bayesian inference were used to determine HIV-1 clusters, evolutionary dynamics, and virus migration rates between geographic regions.