Innovative public-private partnership will use data to guide BC's reopening

An ambitious public-private partnership in British Columbia will track and collect data on COVID-19 in the workplace. The data will provide a real-world view of the disease and its impacts to public health officials and employers as they reopen the doors to the economy.

Biotech companies Xenon Pharmaceutics, Stemcell Technologies and Zymeworks, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia and the BC Centre for Disease Control have joined forces to launch the SAfER project, for "SARS‐CoV‐2 Study for Eased Restrictions in British Columbia."

A $1.2-million study, supported by Genome Canada, Genome BC and industry partners, it will follow 1,500 volunteer employees over a 15-month period as they return to work at the three B.C.-based companies and academic research laboratories.

The goal is to provide data collected in a controlled setting to guide health authorities as they ease restrictions and as employees transition back to work.

The study is the first of its kind in Canada.

“We're missing the baseline data we need to safely reopen businesses and other types of workplaces,“ said SAfER co-lead Dr. Simon Pimstone, President and CEO of Xenon Pharmaceuticals and a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine. "This project is designed to get the private sector, public health authorities, and health care administrators working together to fill in those blanks."

He said the project stemmed from a desire to contribute to Canada’s COVID-19 response: “We thought, at Xenon we can’t make PPE. But we know how to run clinical trials and can bring that rigor to examining COVID-19 and its impact on people in our sector. The results could help guide decision-makers in 2020 and also in future pandemics."

SAfER will collect clinical and psychosocial data over time, plus information on infection, immunity, contacts, and demographics, to answer questions such as: What proportion of people become infected? What is the origin of those infections, based on the viral genome, and how does it change over time? What proportion of people develop antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, and how do those antibodies change over time? How do clinical signs and symptoms correlate with SARS-CoV-2 infection? And what is the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of employees?

The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) will hold and analyze the data. SAfER will be managed by Emmes Canada, a contract research organization; testing and tracing will be conducted with support from diagnostics company LifeLabs and app developer Thrive Health.

In addition to Dr. Pimstone, the project co-leads are Tania Bubela (PhD/JD), Dean and Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University; Josef Penninger (PhD),Canada 150 Chair in Functional Genetics and the Director of the Life Sciences Institute at the University of British Columbia; and Dr. Mel Krajden, a professor at UBC and Associate Director of the BCCDC Public Health Microbiology and Reference Laboratories.

While the focus of the study is on the life sciences sector, SAfER could serve as a model for similar projects in other sectors and jurisdictions, Dr. Pimstone said. "We're going to tackle the complex data collection, analysis and governance issues that a study of this scale raises. If another province wants to initiate a similar study, [the SAfER] template could get them three-quarters of the way there."

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