EU-COVID-19 - a multinational registry-based linkage study with focus on risk and protective factors, clinical outcomes and mental health.

Background and aim: The background for this multinational project is the urgent knowledge gaps on epidemiological factors and consequences of COVID-19 in the general population and vulnerable groups. Moreover, understanding whether available pharmacotherapy options may modify the course and severity of COVID-19 infection, and the impact of the COVID-19 threat on mental health, is an impelling clinical question. The proposed project aims to fill these gaps by generating timely, methodologically sound evidence stemming from high-quality, detailed, and already available population-based data covering a population of over 30 million inhabitants. Methods and material: The project capitalizes on our access to high quality registry data in four countries, Norway, Italy, Denmark and UK, representing individual level patient data across countries with different incidences of COVID-19, and covering different types of health care systems. Design: Register-linkage cohort study with cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis to examine time trends (2018 - 2020). Results will be incorporated in an innovative online risk predicting tool that can be used to predict individual-specific risk for severe COVID-19 infection and prognosis, which is applicable in clinical setting. The research team is highly interdisciplinary, with expertise spanning from the field of epidemiology to pharmacology, biostatistics (incl. machine learning techniques for risk prediction), paediatrics, infectious diseases, signal detection and regulatory pharmacovigilance. The project is a two-year project starting 1. July 2020 and ending 30. June 2022.