Environment submissions database

Cambridge was quick to fund projects addressing various aspects of the crisis in a rapid response call, and to contribute to the national and global efforts to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g. through the donation of vital scientific equipment and the setup of a large-scale COVID-19 testing facility in collaboration with AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline on the University’s Biomedical Campus. Cambridge epidemiologists, pathologists, immunologists, mathematicians and veterinary scientists are helping the government – and the public – better understand the disease. Researchers have been considering its effects on mental health, social behaviour, manufacturing, food insecurity, work, educational equality and, vitally, how we can prevent future pandemics. A rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19, developed by a University of Cambridge spinout company and capable of diagnosing the infection in under 90 minutes, has been deployed at Cambridge hospitals, ahead of being launched in hospitals nationwide. A team from the Whittle Laboratory has designed an open-source ventilator for patients with COVID-19 in partnership with local clinicians, engineers and manufacturers across Africa as part of the Open Ventilator Initiative. The OVSI ventilators can be cheaply and quickly manufactured from readily available components. The University is leading the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium, which is working towards increasing the current capacity for SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequencing in the UK. COG-UK, led by Professor Sharon Peacock (Department of Medicine) ,has enabled the UK to be at the forefront of the identification of emerging COVID variants. The MRC Biostatistics Unit have been informing the UK Government’s response to COVID-19 through regular ‘now-casts’ and ‘forecasts’, as well as founding the Statistical Society Covid-19 Task Force (its members being experts in diverse aspects of applied probability and statistics). The Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit has a leading role in the HDRUK Cambridge COVID-19 Risk Factors Consortium, which aims to understand risk factors for COVID-19, clinical trajectory and associated health outcomes through linkage of population and patient cohort bioresources. Members of the Unit also modelled the COVID-19 epidemic trajectory in 16 countries and the impact of different scenarios of dynamic interventions. Cambridge, in collaboration with spin-out DIOSynVax and the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, is developing a multi-strain heat stable vaccine candidate based on DNA which will be particularly important in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers in Public Health have been supporting those affected by mental ill health through radio programmes and newspaper articles. UKRI-funded neuroscientists are investigating the mental health of volunteers and caregivers in England during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Computer Scientists have been tracking cyber-crime and abuse accelerated by the pandemic’s forcing everyday life online. University research has also focused on NHS capacity, PPE, emergency hospital design, and the logistics and supply chains for frontline resources in the UK: training AI models to predict demands on the NHS at hospital, and even individual patient, level. Most recently a study of transmission among staff at Addenbrooke’s, enabled by the University’s role in the lighthouse testing centre, has shown that the Pfizer vaccine slows the spread of COVID.