At the start of the 2020/2021 academic year some education providers established in-house testing facilities.These specialised sites were created in response to the sharp increase in asymptomatic COVID-19 infection rates among the student population. Their services ran alongside those provided by the UK government, which mainly monitored self-referred symptomatic cases of infection.

Seeing the potential highly controlled cohorts such as these had, the Universities of Nottingham, Cambridge and Cardiff combined resources to create the ACE cohort, which is made up of students and staff who have consented for research.

The cohort’s differences in region, demographics and living arrangement provides unique data that are particularly valuable when investigating the development of immunity against SARS-CoV-2. It is also helpful to studies examining underappreciated aspects of COVID-19 infection, such as the impact of virus mutation on the development of immune response.