Virus Watch: Understanding community incidence, symptom profiles, and transmission of COVID-19 in relation to population movement and behaviour.

The novel strain of Coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused large numbers of deaths and severe societal disruption in China and is predicted to become a global pandemic. To prepare and respond we need to know how many people become infected, how many of them become ill, what their symptoms are, how many seek health care, how commonly they transmit to household contacts, what proportion need hospitalisation and what proportion die. We need to understand how the population responds e.g. hand washing, behaviours during and after coughing, sneezing or nose wiping, and whether people restrict their movements and social contacts. Since many of those infected will have relatively mild symptoms and not seek medical advice the only way to accurately obtain this information is to conduct large scale community studies. We will follow up members of the public and contacts of cases using regular online surveys of symptoms and behaviours, secure tracking of participant movements, and testing for COVID-19 and other respiratory infections to build a detailed picture of how the virus spreads and the population responds. We will share this data with participants, health service and public health planners and the general public to help minimise the impact of the virus.