Thabiso Tema, POWER BREAKFAST host, speaks to Tulio de Oliveira, Director of the Centre for Epidemic Response Innovation at Stellenbosch University, about how he was recognised for his pivotal role in identifying major COVID-19 variants that reshaped the global pandemic response. As leader of a major genomic surveillance network, he and his teams were instrumental in detecting the Beta variant in 2020 and later the Omicron variant in 2021.