National study launched to investigate COVID-19 infections in care homes, led by IHI's Professor Laura Shallcross MBE.

The Problem
Care home residents and people who work in care homes have higher rates of infection compared to the general population. Care home residents are also more likely to be admitted to hospital or to die from COVID-19.
Currently, we do not know how many people living and working in care homes are infected with COVID-19, or how many have been infected in the past. This information is essential to work out how to protect care home staff and residents from infection.
The Research
UCL researchers have set up a national research study called “Vivaldi” with Four Seasons healthcare, a large care home chain, and the Department of Health and Social Care. The aim of the study is to find out how many care home staff and residents have been infected with COVID-19, to inform decisions around the best approach to COVID-19 testing in the future.
By testing around 6500 staff and 5000 residents across >100 care homes in England, we will estimate the proportion who have been infected with COVID-19 in the past and have antibodies, and the proportion who are infected now. These tests will be repeated over time to learn how COVID-19 spreads in care homes and how long the antibody response lasts and whether this helps to prevent re-infection with the virus. In those who are currently infected, we will also collect information on who is experiencing symptoms to help us to understand how this affects the spread of infection within care homes. We will find out about how infection spreads between care homes, the community and hospitals by linking the information we collect to national data on hospital admissions and deaths.

In collaboration with researchers at the University of Birmingham, we will be performing more in-depth tests that will tell us about the different components of the immune response to COVID-19 and how this changes over time.
We will perform in-depth interviews with a number of care home staff to understand how the pandemic has affected working conditions and measures to prevent infections in care homes in collaboration with the CATCH-19 study. This is the largest care home study in England. Our goal is to use our results to inform national policy on COVID-19 testing and prevent infections in care homes.
Timeline
The study started in June 2020 and will run until April 2022.
Updates
We will publish regular updates in reports that will be shared with the Department of Health & Social Care. We will publish our protocol and our results in pre-print and peer-reviewed journals.
Funder
Department of Health & Social Care
UCL Staff
Professor Laura Shallcross, Institute of Health Informatics
Professor Andrew Hayward, Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care
Dr Andrew Copas, Institute for Global Health
Dr Maria Krutikov, Institute of Health Informatics
Dr Oliver Stirrup, Institute for Global Health
Borscha Azmi, Institute of Health Informatics
Chris Fuller, Institute of Health Informatics
Dr Tom Palmer, Institute for Global Health
Dr Gillian Forbes, Centre for Behaviour Change
Dr Fabiana Lorencatto, Centre for Behaviour Change
Cécile Brémont, Institute of Health Informatics (administration)
Wider network
Professor Paul Moss, University of Birmingham
Dr Rachel Bruton, University of Birmingham
Mr James Robson, Four Seasons Healthcare
Dr Susan Hopkins, Public Health England
Professor Jeremy Farrar, Wellcome Trust
Dr Gokhan Tut, University of Birmingham
Professor Markus Ralser, Francis Crick Institute
Other Information and Contact
- ISRCTN registration 14447421
- Study protocol in Wellcome Open Research
- Contact us vivaldi.covid19@ucl.ac.uk
- See the study privacy notice