Department / Institute: Institute of Transfusion Medicine and Transplant Engineering (ITT)

A pandemic outbreak of a rapidly spreading emerging pathogen with a high mortality rate and the lack of targeted treatment makes passive immunization a conceivable therapeutic option, as it is quickly available. Adoptive immunotherapy by convalescent plasma, i.e. the therapeutic transfer of pathogen-specific antibodies, has already been successfully used for prevention or treatment in viral epidemics. The ITT at Hannover Medical School has taken up this therapeutic approach and  initiated the clinical study COMET (EudraCT-No.2020-001936-86) to investigate whether the therapeutic transmission of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in convalescent plasma can prevent a severe course of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients with moderate COVID-19. The study follows the approach that antibodies are usually most effective when administered shortly after the onset of symptoms. The COMET study is funded by the Federal Ministry of Health.

Department / Institute: Department of Hematology, Hemostasis, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation

To control the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to keep the number of new infections low. In addition to general hygiene measures, social distancing and face masks, contact tracing plays a key role for epidemic control. Contact tracing is currently performed by healthcare authorities via individual telephone interview of the infected persons. However, high infection rates can overburden healthcare authorities to such an extent that identification of contact persons is clearly limited.
Our application software KADOIN has the potential to digitize the process of contract tracing and supports both, the staff in the healthcare offices as well as the citizens. Digital documentation of contacts persons can be done autonomously and regardless of official opening times of the healthcare authorities. In contrast to telephone interviews, a visual map based system guides people with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection to their last locations. This scenic memory protocol should simplify to remember the contact persons and thus to improve the quality of data in terms of contact tracing.

Department / Institute: Institute of Sports Medicine

According to current knowledge, athletes are usually not among the risk groups for a severe course of COVID-19 disease. However, this does not rule out the possibility that athletes could become infected with SARS-CoV-2. It is currently unclear whether people who have been through a COVID-19 infection are immune to reinfection for a period of time and also cannot act as carriers of the infection. Should it become evident in the future that an infection that has passed through reliably leads to an effective immunity of the athletes, this might have both clinical and practical relevance.
The two main goals of our study are to gain knowledge through the investigations,
- how are infection frequency and immunity development with regard to a SARS-CoV-2 infection in the group of national team and Paralympic athletes,
- whether athletes with positive antibody detection for SARS-CoV-2 show impairments of health, physical resilience and performance.

Department / Institute: Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) - Department of Epidemiology

In the Corona pandemic, one of the major challenges of the Public Health Service in Germany (ÖGD) is to implement a comprehensive contact person management system (KPM). With the help of this instrument, infection chains shall be detected at an early stage so that appropriate measures can be initiated. In addition to sufficient staffing, KPM requires process-simplifying, integrated software solutions for health offices to enable fast, comprehensive and direct communication. Currently, health offices in Germany cannot link cases with contact persons across county borders. A representation and evaluation of infection chains is thus not possible. State authorities and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) can currently only access this epidemiological data after a delay in transmission. The aim of the project is to develop, implement and evaluate a pilot system for all levels of the ÖGD, which overcomes the described challenges in an integrative manner and significantly reduces the workload in the ÖGD.

Department / Institute: HCTC-KKS - Coordinating Center for Clinical Studies, MHH

The CRIT-COV study is a prospective, single-arm, multi-center, international, observational study. Three urine samples are taken for the mass spectrometric index test from each patient, a first urine sample at day 0-2, a second on day 4-5, and a third on day 10-14.

A total number of 1000 patients with SARS-COV-2 infection are included in the CRIT-COV study.

The distribution of the severity should include 33% (approx. 330) outpatients and 66% inpatients, of which half (approx. 330) each with severe and critical illness.

The objective of the CRIT-COV project is to develop a non-invasive urine peptide test for clinical use for the early and accurate prediction of critical disease progression in COVID-19-infected patients according to the 8-step WHO endpoint.

 

Department / Institute: Institute for Epidemiology, Social Medicine and Health Systems Research

Since March 2020, numerous amounts of lockdown measures have been issued in order to regulate COVID-19-related infections. It is of most importance to understand the public preferences regarding the necessity and regulation of these measures. This project is based on preliminary research conducted by the COSMO-consortium and the BZgA. The aim was to test the feasibility of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) for this matter (self-funded). DCEs allow understanding of preferences in detail. Since the beginning, DCEs have been part of the COSMO-surveys. The participants choose from two scenarios incorporating four topics: different re-opening strategies, additional protection measures, health as well as economic outcomes. Due to rapid changes in the pandemic, DCE designs are well suited to understand public preferences.