Public Health Scotland, University of Edinburgh

Academic Institute

Chris Robertson

eDRIS-1920-0279

Scotland is an ideal place to carry out this research as there is a unique reference number for every individual. This makes it easy to link together different health datasets and construct an electronic cohort based upon data from 250 general practices and 1.2m individuals (22% of the population). Such a large cohort, gives wide regional coverage and permits investigation of subgroups such as children aged under 5 or adults over 65. These data are already being collected for routine care - information on GP consultations, prescriptions, out of hours’ consultations, use of accident and emergency and hospital admissions. It also includes laboratory tests to diagnose a person with coronavirus and specifically COVID-19. Individuals will be having routine blood tests and a sample of unused blood will be stored and eventually tested for the presence of COVID-19 antibodies to work out the proportion of the population exposed during the epidemic. We will also sequence virus genomes from a sample of patients. The analysis of these data is carried out in a safe haven using anonymised data so that individuals cannot be identified. This cohort will be followed up to monitor the progress of the COVID-19 epidemic and to evaluate which interventions are effective for treating and preventing the virus.

05/05/2020

TRE