European cohorts of patients and schools to advance response to epidemics
EuCARE answers to an emergency call from the European Union, in the frame of the Horizon Europe programme, to confront the COVID-19 epidemics and in particular the newly emerging SARS-COV-2 variants under several aspects.
OBJECTIVES
To study viral variants in relation to their capacity to escape control by available vaccines.
To study viral variants in relation to their capacity to escape diagnosis by available tests.
To study the host immune response to different variants, in terms of both antibody and cellular immunity; and to evaluate possible cross – immunisation with other coronaviruses.
To assess the role of the different viral variants in response to treatment interventions and in disease progression, including long-term outcome, and to identify predictors of patients at higher risk.
To determine the prevalence of viral variants, their attack rates and clusters in schools compared with the general population.
To compare the efficacy of different screening methods and of different preventive measures in schools with respect to new viral variants; in particular, an emerging pooled saliva screening method will be evaluated.
To evaluate the psychological and learning-loss effect of the school closure and preventive measures during the pandemic.
METHODOLOGY
EuCARE gathers clinical cohorts from 10 strategic countries across Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America. Overall, the hospitals have enrolled, until now, more than 44,000 hospitalised patients, PASC and healthcare workers (HCW) from very diverse countries, with a wide coverage of different vaccines, different healthcare systems, different viral variants, distributions and different treatment protocols.
Additionally, EuCARE focuses on schools, expanding the ongoing school screening program from Germany and Mexico to include newly enrolled schools in Portugal and Italy, covering all school grades. The school cohort now includes 28 schools in Italy, Portugal and Mexico, with more than 460 classes across all ages, from very diverse areas in terms of urbanisation, socioeconomic status, containment protocols and use of PPEs.
WORK PACKAGES STRUCTURE
WP1
Cohorts and data platform
Laboratory network for virological and immunological studies
Patients and HCW cochorts
Schools cohort
Artificial intelligence
Communication, dissemination, and exploitation for long term sustainability
Management and coordination
Ensures compliance with ethics requirements set by the ethics project review.