Portugal participates in an international project that will assess the impact of Covid-19 variants – Coronavirus
Portugal participates in an international project that will assess the impact of distance education on learning during a covid-19 pandemic and the new coronavirus variants in treatments and vaccines.
The EuCARE project, which will be officially launched on Thursday and Friday in Rome, Italy, will gather and analyze data from patients, healthcare professionals and the school population.
In all, 22 universities, hospitals, entities and research centers from various countries participate in the project, with Portugal being represented by the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the Hospital Egas Moniz, both in Lisbon.
Portugal will contribute with a sample of 2,000 students and teachers, 1,400 hospitalized patients, 200 patients with “long covid-19” and 100 health professionals, told Lusa a coordinator of the Portuguese team, Ana Abecassis, who heads the Public Health Unit International and Biostatistics of the IHMT.
Ana Abecassis explained that the project, which has a duration of five years and European funds, proposes to carry out, inter alia, epidemiological monitoring, including the new variants of SARS-CoV-2, and to evaluate the impact of current variants of the coronavirus on diagnoses, vaccines and treatments against covid-19 and in the immune response.
A questionnaire will be made to students and teachers to assess the impact of distance learning during the closing of schools during the confinement period.
The school offer will also be compared to the effectiveness of different screening methods, including saliva tests.
The first results of the study are expected within six months.
The list of participating countries also includes Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Israel, Lithuania, Georgia, Belgium, Kenya, Vietnam, Mexico and Russia.
Covid-19 is a pandemic respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China. The Delta variant is the most contagious of all the variants in circulation.