SUrveilling Prospective Population cOhorts for COVID19 pRevalence and ouTcomes in Canada (SUPPORT-Canada)

The ability to assess the spread and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic is central to our ability to inform a targeted and proportional public health response, both now and in the future. Here, we will leverage major prior investments into Canadian health platforms to enable the rapid development of a Canadian COVID-19 cohort and research resource that will enable the real-time assessment of population susceptibility and prevalence and act as a critical resource to support both population and clinical-level research at a national scale. The initiative titled SUrveilling Prospective Population cOhorts for COVID19 pRevalence and ouTcomes in Canada (SUPPORT-Canada) aims to capture data and biologics to enable population-level surveillance, and enable researchers and clinicians to find factors contributing to COVID-19 susceptibility and severity, thus identifying high risk individuals or communities across Canada. Building on partnerships between the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow's Health, Canada's largest population cohort, the University Hospital Network, and regional partners, SUPPORT-Canada is a collaborative effort, with both national and global partners, that will and capture critical short- and long-term COVID-19 clinical features from affected and unaffected Canadians. Our platform has been designed to integrate with national and global research efforts to support clinical, immunological and genetic studies of COVID19. Our integrated approach will enable rapid data sharing and translation of findings to the public health and research community. The identification of diagnosed and symptomatic participants within the Canadian population will enable rapid surveillance that can support our public health agencies at the community and the individual level. Capturing COVID-19-specific information will enable us to provide the research community timely data to support surveillance, prevention and risk factor research.