Bern, Get Ready (BEready) Cohort Study for Pandemic Preparedness

University of Bern

Status: Active, not recruiting

Conditions: Pandemic, COVID-19; Epidemic Disease; Infections; Respiratory Tract Infections; Zoonoses

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06739499

2023-02290

Details and patient eligibility

About

The BEready project aims to find out how people in the Canton of Bern can be helped to be more prepared for the next pandemic. BEready wants to understand how infections spread among people as well as between people and animals. BEready wants to find out how social and environmental factors can influence the transmission or catching of infectious diseases. BEready wants to better understand how households and their pets in the Canton of Bern were and continue to be affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Full description

The overall aim is to establish BEready as a 'pandemic preparedness cohort', a cohort with a well-characterised study population of households, which has an infrastructure to conduct studies about infectious diseases, and which can be rapidly mobilised to respond to a new pandemic. BEready aims to understand the epidemiology and transmission of infectious diseases (particularly viral respiratory pathogens) in households including pets in the canton of Bern, and to engage diverse communities in efforts to strengthen pandemic preparedness.

The objectives are:

• to study the distribution and timing of infectious diseases and transmission patterns of circulating infectious diseases, both between individuals and at the human-animal interface (One Health)
• to study social (e.g. gender, affective polarisation) and environmental factors (e.g. climate change), which may affect transmission or acquisition of infectious diseases;
• to understand how households, including their pets, in the canton of Bern have been and will be affected by COVID-19; and
• to engage diverse communities in ongoing efforts to strengthen pandemic and public health literacy, and to prepare for the public health response to a new pandemic.

Enrollment: 2,157 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria for adults and children:

• Informed consent
• Residence (average of more than 3 days/week) in a private household in the canton of Bern where at least one member aged 18 agreed to take part.
• For adults, children aged 14 years or older, and parents/legal guardians: internet connection (Wi-Fi, fixed or on a mobile phone) and personal email address.
• For adults, children aged 11 years or older, and parents/legal guardians: able to understand, speak, read and write German, French and/or English.

Inclusion criteria for household pets: Pets of eligible household members with the consent of their owners.

Exclusion criteria for adults and children: Currently planned move outside the canton of Bern