the brazilian Tulio de Oliveira he appeared in a press statement on November 26, wearing a striped shirt, pinned hair, and looking tired. A reflection of the intense race of the scientist and his team to sequence samples of the new strain of coronavirus, which made headlines around the world and was named the Omicron in that day. It is not the researcher’s first discovery in the pandemic: he was also responsible for sequencing Beta, another version of Sars-CoV-2 found in South Africa and identified as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Oliveira is director of the South African Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation (Ceri). That day, after receiving permission from President Cyril Ramaphosa, the scientist asked the WHO meeting to discuss the new variant.
The meeting brought together 100 of the most important scientists in the field, including the renowned immunologist Anthony Fauci, who advises the White House on the fight against covid-19. “I’m the lead investigator for the genomic surveillance network in South Africa. I’m usually very involved in talking to the other heads of genomic research groups around the world,” he says, a member of the WHO viral evolution group, to state.
The warning about Ômicron and other variants led Oliveira to an even more select group: he was listed this week among the ten most influential on the planet by the magazine Nature, alongside engineer Zhang Rongqiao, who coordinated a Chinese mission to Mars, and the German climatologist Friederike Otto.
Being the bearer of bad news, however, is not just about glories. After alerting humanity to the new danger, he and his colleagues were even threatened with death. To keep working, they even increased security at the university. “Unfortunately, it’s normal, because the population in general still has difficulty understanding which pathogens and epidemics are going to arise in different geographic areas”, he says.
He also laments the response of several countries to Ômicron, with many air restrictions and little offer to send more doses of vaccines to poor countries. “In fact, Ômicron could have come from anywhere in the world. And even banning flights from South Africa, it went everywhere.”
From AIDS to dengue, in search of the virus trail
Oliveira, who began his studies at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), has been in South Africa since 1997 and has been working with genomic surveillance for nearly 20 years. It has hundreds of publications in renowned magazines like itself Nature, Science, Lancet e NEJM. “Before the whole world worked with genomic surveillance“He says.
The sequencing skill was used in the African country to investigate the virus of the aids. “We have implemented to a great extent the use of genomics to identify mutations in patients who fail HIV therapies and tuberculosis, to put them in a more efficient line of therapy”, he explains.
Over the last two decades, Ceri and Crisp, institutions that Oliveira directs, have received Brazilian researchers. “They come and go, both to work with us here, and to us working on the genomic response to emerging viruses in Brazil”, says the scientist, who works in partnership with national institutions, such as the Fiocruz.
Oliveira’s team was also behind the sequencing of other viruses known to Brazilians, such as the zika, which led the WHO to declare an international emergency in 2016, yellow fever, dengue e chikungunya. In 2019, his team installed mobile DNA sequencing laboratories, inside motor homes or buses, to follow the trail of epidemics across Brazil. “We took a long trip. We left Cuiabá and went to Campo Grande, from there to Goiânia, and then Brasília. From mid to late 2019, we had major outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya in the Midwest”, he recalls.
Although used to genomic analysis, the differential of the pandemic was the speed and immediate usefulness of identifying the variants. This helped prepare healthcare networks for new waves of covid. THE South Africa is ahead of Brazil in monitoring the virus. The country follows 0.82% of the strains, compared to 0.35% in Brazil. “What helps us a lot here in South Africa is that there is a lot of funding and support from the government. What, unfortunately, hasn’t happened in Brazil in recent years. They cut a lot of money from science in Brazil”, criticizes Oliveira.
According to him, local authorities insist on listening to scientists to respond to the pandemic. For each variant identified, the contact is fast. “In less than 36 hours, I speak directly to the Minister of Science, Technology and Health, in addition to the President of South Africa.” Brazil, on the other hand, stood out worldwide for the denial attitude of authorities, such as President Jair Bolsonaro, to the health crisis.
In search of balance with nature
Oliveira is the son of a Mozambican woman, who only returned to her home country after the end of apartheid in South Africa. She knew, according to the scientist, that the civil war in her homeland would end, because the conflict had the support of the southern segregationist regime. -African.
The researcher and the sisters left Brazil and accompanied their mother. They stayed in Durban, a South African city that is close to Mozambique. He completed his studies in South Africa, spent time in Oxford, UK. Its curriculum also includes the universities of KwaZulu-Natal and Washington.
In addition to a career in academia, he spent ten years at The Wellcome Trust, an independent global charity dedicated to improving health. This year he returned to Stellenbosch, in the Cape Town region, to found Ceri.
Oliveira’s wife is from South Africa and the couple has three small children – he took care of the children while talking to the state this Thursday, 16. The boys, every year, visit Brazil.
On social media, in addition to alerts about the pandemic, he publishes photos of the beautiful landscapes of South Africa. “We need quality of life to continue producing high-level science for a long time. I take the balancing life with part very seriously. family leisure,” he says.
