Scientific Taskforce

The UMCG and UG have joined forces in setting up the Scientific Corona Task Force. This interdisciplinary group of researchers will work on the scientific questions this crisis raises. They bring together the various activities and research projects that are currently running and will be set up, in order to keep everyone up to date and make connections between different projects. The Task Force works on clinical solutions and medicines, as well as on the social, ethical, legal and systems aspects of the situation. Updates will be shared on this page.

If you want to apply to perform Covid-related research, please send an email to BureauOnderzoek umcg.nl. All research requests will then be forwarded to the scientific committee. All research projects that are granted permission to start will be published on the O&O Corona-website and the Aletta website.

Global PsyCorona study

A team of more than 30 psychologists from around the world launched the global PsyCorona study to investigate the psychological impact of COVID-19. Currently we expand our large global sample quickly to help in the COVID-19 fight. We hope to combine psychological data with public testing data to predict the virus spread and invite all other sciences to contribute.

Approximately 60,000 respondents completed the initial survey, which was available in 30 languages. Given early indications that age and gender were likely vulnerability factors (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020; Wenham et al., 2020), the sample included 20 national subsamples representative of population age/gender distributions. After completing the survey, respondents could sign up to be contacted for follow-up surveys that would continue through the initial lockdowns and into an anticipated second wave of the virus in the fall or winter. The longitudinal research will continue through 2020.