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（COVID-19）在中国造成大量死亡和严重的社会混乱，预计将成为全球大流行病。为了预防和应对，我们需要知道有多少人被感染，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常见程度，需要住院治疗的比例以及死亡的比例。我们需要了解人群的反应，例如洗手，咳嗽、打喷嚏或擦鼻时和之后的行为，以及人们是否限制他们的行动和社会接触。由于许多感染者的症状相对较轻，不寻求医疗建议，准确获得这些信息的唯一方法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COVID-19和其他呼吸道感染的检测来跟踪公众和病例接触者，以详细了解病毒如何传播和人口反应。我们将与参与者、卫生服务和公共卫生规划人员以及公众分享这些数据，以帮助最大限度地减少病毒的影响。

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.