CORDIS

On 30th January 2020 WHO declared a global health emergency for the outbreak of the 2019 novel Coronavirus (COVID-19, or 2019-nCoV) that originated in Wuhan, China. COVID-19 has spread to 27 countries and with 45204 confirmed cases and 1118 deaths (12th Feb 2020), this outbreak exceeds the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003 both in terms of infected and death toll.
Diagnostic tests are essential to control the outbreak. The Chinese authorities issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA) for 4 new COVID-19 detection products by the end of January 2020 and in the US the FDA issued the first EUA on February 4th. These tests are, however, all based on methods suited only for well-equipped centralized laboratories.
CORONADX will provide one “front line” and two “second line” diagnostic tools for COVID-19. The “front line” diagnostics can be performed as a fast, simple, point of care test (POC) in the field by a minimally trained person (e.g. at hospitals or clinics, at point of entry, in a plane, on a cruise ship, in an ambulance, on a parking lot, in a home quarantine setting etc.). The “second line” diagnostics require minimum (portable) equipment and can be performed by briefly trained personnel in hospitals, primary health care units or in mobile laboratories. These solutions will be available in month 4 and EUA applications will be submitted by month 7. These POCs with lab and field evaluations will allow for fast detection and surveillance of the epeidemic and greatly improve the diagnosis and clinical management of patients infected with COVID-19.
The development of rapid POC diagnostics will be supported by clinical and molecular epidemiological studies on the characterization and spatio-temporal evolution of the COVID-19 virus and identify infection sources as e.g. the animal reservoir.The social sciences research in CORONADX will provide information on societal resilience in the era of social media, and the related public health preparedness.