Following the emergence of Covid-19 and its pandemic spread, Ireland in common with countries worldwide has implemented unprecedented public health measures to contain the virus and mitigate its impact. There is now a critical need for evidence on the impact and sustainability of these measures to inform the national and global response to the pandemic in the period ahead and specifically to address questions of relevance to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre and the National Public Health Emergency Team. The specific objectives of this project are to
i) estimate population prevalence and trends of self-reported sensitive symptoms of Covid-19 and (via record linkage) the proportions of symptomatic individuals subsequently testing positive for Covid-19 in a series of four short telephone surveys of 950 participants each during the period May-June, 2020;
ii) describe acceptance and compliance with physical distancing and related measures in the population and explore the effects of these public health measures on the physical, psychological and social well-being of the Irish population in three longer telephone surveys involving 1000 participants to be conducted between May and September 2020; iii) develop a mathematical network model that incorporates the outputs from the cross-sectional surveys in addition to relevant publicly available data to inform decisions on the optimal levels and duration of physical distancing measures and thereby support the ongoing work of the Irish Covid-19 Epidemiological Modelling Group.
The work will be carried out in collaboration with Ipsos, a global market research firm and in collaboration with the National Health Protection Surveillance Centre. The lead applicant, co-applicants and collaborators draw on a wide range of expertise in survey design and implementation, academic and service oriented public health, epidemiology, statistics, mathematical modelling, psychology and sociology. The research team will be able to commence work on the project in May 2020.
