This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
£5m for research investigating how coronavirus spreads
Eight new research projects on coronavirus transmission have been awarded funding by the NIHR and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
The newly funded projects will research how the virus spreads in schoolchildren, healthcare workers and a strictly-Orthodox Jewish community, as well as in medical settings and on surfaces in public spaces.
Collectively awarded a total of £5.3 million, the projects will help inform policy decisions about coronavirus, including infection prevention strategies and containment measures.
Healthcare workers have a high risk of exposure to coronavirus. One element of this risk is their exposure to the virus in tiny droplets of liquid - or aerosols - that are generated during some medical procedures. One of the newly funded projects will assess the amount, type and infectiousness of aerosol generated during a variety of procedures, to help determine how best to organise care.
Transmission of coronavirus in healthcare settings is likely to have had a considerable role in the spread of the pandemic in the UK. Two studies will assess how transmission in healthcare settings compares with that among the general public.
The first will analyse UK-wide data on hospital cases of coronavirus to understand how important transmission and infection control in hospitals was to the first ‘wave’ in the UK, whereas the second will study healthcare staff to determine how healthcare exposures affect transmission risk compared with other factors outside the workplace.
Another newly funded study will work with healthcare staff, in this case collecting blood samples from doctors and nurses who have been infected with coronavirus to determine how the immune system responds to infection. The researchers hope their findings will help understand how we develop antibodies that fight the virus and could be used to inform a vaccination plan for healthcare workers.
Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England and Head of the NIHR, said: “Understanding which factors are important in Covid-19 transmission and therefore how the disease spreads is important for targeting measures to control the pandemic. These eight new research projects funded by NIHR and UKRI will help us to understand transmission in a number of key groups and settings.”
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