COVID-19 Clinical Trials and Expanded Access

The purpose of this study is to determine whether a higher dose of low molecular weight heparin (enoxaparin 40 mg b.i.d.) is superior than the standard prophylaxis dose (enoxaparin 40 mg o.d.) in reducing thromboembolic events in COVID-19 patients.

This study evaluates the effects of the addition of chlorpromazine to the standard therapeutic protocol in COVID-19 patients hospitalized for respiratory symptom management (score 3-5 WHO Ordinal Scale for Clinical Improvement).

The COVID epidemics is responsible for a huge number of death following COVID acute respiratory failure. First instance treatment includes oxygenotherapy up to 15L/min in spontaneous ventilation. However COVID infection can ultimately lead to an acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) requiring mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit (ICU). Guidelines on ARDS management are based on small ventilation volume (6 mL/kg), a pulmonary end expiratory pressure (PEEP) chosen to get the best pulmonary compliance, a plateau pressure lower than 30 cm of water and daily prone positioning when PaO2/FiO2 ratio is lower than 150. In ventilated ARDS patients, prone positioning has shown survival improvement. Though they applied this optimized management of ARDS patients, Chinese intensivists have recently reported mortality rate higher than 50% in ARDS COVID patients requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation. Before being intubated and admitted to ICU, COVID patients require increasing rate of oxygen delivery. From the start of the epidemics, we have observed that an oxygenotherapy rate higher than 3L/min at the initial phase of the disease was associated with a high risk of severe acute respiratory distress (30%) The investigators hypothesize that prone positioning in patients in spontaneous ventilation (not tubed) from the stage of oxygenotherapy higher than 3L/min (to get an SpO2 of 95% or higher) would prevent respiratory worsening and the need for intubation. Prone positioning is easy to apply in patients in spontaneous ventilation since they can change position by themselves.

The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) is a viral illness caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2), now deemed a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Some COVID-19 patients may develop coagulopathy which is associated with poor prognosis and high risk of thrombosis. Some patients develop severe thrombotic complications, such as pulmonary embolism, despite anti-thrombotic prophylaxis by low molecular weight heparin. The aim of this project is to evaluate modified thromboelastometry for identifying patients at high risk of thrombosis. The hypothesize is that hypofibrinolysis with increased plasma PAI-1, TAFI (thrombin-activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor ) levels in association with high thrombin generation may explain high incidence of thrombosis in this population. A simple laboratory assay, widely available in hospitals, such as thromboelastometry, might be of great clinical interest to detect Covid-19 patients with high risk of thrombosis. In order to make ROTEM more sensitive to hypofibrinolysis, exogenous t-PA will be added in the assay. The preliminary results showed that patients with Covid-19 have significant hypercoagulability detectable with ROTEM and Covid-19 patients with thrombosis have both hypercoagulability and hypofibrinolysis.

To describe the radiological presentation of brain abnormalities in COVID-19 + patients

In this protocol, we seek to examine the role of popular messaging platform WhatsApp in information spread during a crisis. As there have been few global crises in the last decade (coinciding with the rise of social media), the role of private messaging platforms such as WhatsApp during crisis contexts remains understudied. During the current COVID-19 global health crisis, we undertook this study to: (1) characterize the nature of WhatsApp use during crises, (2) characterize the profiles of WhatsApp users (3) understand how WhatsApp usage links to well-being (fear and thoughts about COVID-19).

Rationale In a very short time corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a pandemic with high morbidity and mortality. The main cause of death is respiratory failure including acute respiratory distress syndrome, however the exact mechanisms and other underlying pathology is currently not yet known. In the current setting of the COVID-19 pandemic complete autopsies seem too risky due to the risk of SARS CoV-2 transmission. Yet, as so little is known, additional histopathological, microbiological and virologic study of tissue of deceased COVID-19 patients will provide important clinical and pathophysiological information. Minimal invasive autopsy combined with postmortem imaging seems therefore an optimal method combining safety on the one hand yet proving significant information on the other. This study aims to determine the cause of death and attributable conditions in deceased COVID-19 patients. This will be performed using post-mortem CT-scanning plus CT-guided MIA to obtain tissue for further histological, microbiological and pathological diagnostics. In addition, the pathophysiology of COVID-19 will be examined by further tissue analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a major and imminent challenge for health care systems regarding patient triage and allocation of limited resources worldwide. The involved pathogenetic mechanisms as well as the clinical value of established and emerging biomarkers for early risk prediction are largely unknown. To fill these gaps in knowledge, investigators designed the prospective, interdisciplinary, observational, case-control "COronaVIrus surviVAl (COVIVA)" study platform, aiming to deliver an open-source platform to i) perform extensive clinical and biomarker phenotyping in COVID-19 suspects presenting to the emergency department (ED) as well as admitted to the intensive care unit, ii) compare clinical and biomarker profiles of COVID-19 patients with a control group, iii) derive and validate personalized risk prediction models for early clinical decision support, and iv) explore pathophysiological mechanisms including but not limited to inflammatory, immunological and cardiovascular pathways. Blood samples (serum) are routinely collected for bio banking both in cases and controls. Patients are followed 30 days after discharge. Personalized risk prediction models will be derived and validated based on advanced statistical models including machine-based learning incorporating a variety of clinical parameters and biomarker signatures (including digitally stored in-hospital data, e.g. imaging, ECG, ventilation parameters). Close cooperation with multiple other national and international COVID-19 cohorts is endorsed. The personalized risk prediction models from the COVIVA study will support clinicians in the most challenging process of limited resource allocation in a timely fashion. In addition, pathophysiological mechanisms and differences in mild and severe variants of COVID-19 as well as in the control group can be extensively studied in a multidisciplinary approach.

The primary goal of the study is to conduct the first systematic cardiac autopsy study in 60 patients dying from COVID-19 to understand the pathology and pathogenesis of cardiac injury in patients with COVID-19, with/without cardiovascular comorbidities. Such data is essential for understanding rate of involvement, type of involvement and degree of injury in patients contracting the disease.

Purpose: To determine the number of asymptomatic individuals who have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19