McNeil, Shelly A

Published purpose

The purpose of this funding opportunity is to develop and deploy a clinical epidemiology research protocol to a number of surveillance network sites in order to enable rapid implementation in the event of an outbreak of COVID-19 in Canada. The proposed research will collect epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory characteristics of the disease outbreak in Canada, with the following objectives: • Describe the clinical presentation and spectrum of disease in sentinel hospital sites in Canada; • Describe key epidemiological characteristics such as incubation period, case-fatality rate, and risk factors in Canada; • Characterize the duration of viral shedding; • Describe the response to treatment, including standard of care and potentially approved novel therapeutics, if any; • Understand risk factors associated with different clinical outcomes following infection; and • Support development of evidence-informed clinical guidance and recommendations. Sex and gender differences exist in the objectives above, making sex and/or gender issues an important component of this research initiative. CIHR will require applicants to consider sex as a biological variable and gender as a socio-cultural factor in their research.