COLUMBUS – Researchers at have been awarded a five-year, $10 million grant to study the long-term health impacts of COVID-19 on firefighters, police officers, healthcare workers and the people who live with them.
The grant from the National Cancer Institute in the National Institutes of Health to the Ohio State University College of Medicine and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center will fund the Center for Serological Testing to Improve Outcomes from Pandemic COVID-19, known as STOP-COVID, said Peter Mohler, chief scientific officer for the Wexner Medical Center and vice dean for research for the Ohio State College of Medicine.
Researchers will learn more about the exposure risks, transmission, immune responses, disease severity, protection and barriers to testing and vaccination.
“The Center to STOP-COVID will address some of the biggest questions in the field, such as ‘Can people be re-infected with COVID-19 once positive? Why are some people more at risk for being infected and symptomatic? Does infection with closely related viruses provide immunity or worsen COVID-19 disease outcomes?’ This whole scientific platform is based directly on the data our researchers collected during the earliest days of the pandemic, in March and early April,” Mohler said.
Partnering with the Columbus Police Department and Columbus Division of Fire, the Center to STOP-COVID will employ state-of-the-art tests developed at Ohio State in a long-term study of nearly 2,000 first responders, a group at high risk of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and members of their households.
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Ohio reported 856 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 Monday for a total of 145,165 with 4,623 deaths. There are currently 17,119 active cases, 96 more than Sunday.