Virus Watch: Understanding community incidence, symptom profiles, and transmission of COVID-19 in relation to population movement and behaviour.

新型冠状病毒(新冠肺炎)已在中国造成大量死亡和严重的社会混乱，并预计将成为一场全球大流行。在预防和应对方面，我们需要知道有多少人被感染，其中有多少人生病，他们的症状是什么，有多少人寻求医疗保健，他们传播给家庭接触者的频率有多高，需要住院治疗的比例和死亡比例。我们需要了解人们的反应，例如洗手，咳嗽、打喷嚏或擦鼻涕期间和之后的行为，以及人们是否限制自己的行动和社交。由于许多感染者的症状相对较轻，并不寻求医疗咨询，因此准确获得这些信息的唯一途径是进行大规模的社区研究。我们将通过定期在线症状和行为调查、安全跟踪参与者的活动以及新冠肺炎和其他呼吸道感染检测来跟踪公众成员和病例接触者，以详细了解病毒如何传播和人群反应。我们将与参与者、卫生服务和公共卫生规划者以及公众分享这些数据，以帮助将病毒的影响降至最低。

The novel strain of Coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused large numbers of deaths andsevere societal disruption in China and is predicted to become a global pandemic. Toprepare and respond we need to know how many people become infected, how many ofthem become ill, what their symptoms are, how many seek health care, how commonlythey transmit to household contacts, what proportion need hospitalisation and whatproportion die. We need to understand how the population responds e.g. hand washing,behaviours during and after coughing, sneezing or nose wiping, and whether peoplerestrict their movements and social contacts. Since many of those infected will haverelatively mild symptoms and not seek medical advice the only way to accurately obtainthis information is to conduct large scale community studies. We will follow up members ofthe public and contacts of cases using regular online surveys of symptoms andbehaviours, secure tracking of participant movements, and testing for COVID-19 and otherrespiratory infections to build a detailed picture of how the virus spreads and thepopulation responds. We will share this data with participants, health service and publichealth planners and the general public to help minimise the impact of the virus.