Chan Zuckerberg Initiative unveils $13.6 million collaboration for COVID-19 research; pandemic brings fortunes, and headaches, to Amazon.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative funds effort to track infection rate

The Bay Area is defeating COVID-19. But as restrictions ease, will infections jump — forcing us to do this all over again?

A massive new testing effort will tell us. On Wednesday, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced a $13.6 million collaboration between the region’s top research institutions that will measure the disease’s future trajectory in our region.

“This is a real way to inform what we’re doing,” said pediatrician and health policy expert Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who is leading Stanford University’s role in the venture. “It will help tell us: What are the downstream effects of changes to our containment policies?”

Starting next month, the consortium of UC San Francisco, Stanford University and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a research center that brings together scientists from UCSF, Stanford and UC Berkeley, will conduct two long-term studies.

The first project will test a broad, representative population of 4,000 residents of six Bay Area counties between May and December. Once a month, participants will take tests for both the virus and the antibodies that indicate past infections.

This goal of this study is to guide policy decisions about the safe reopening of our economy. It will also reveal, through genome sequencing of each virus, our regional chains of transmission — and whether new COVID-19 pathogens are being introduced from outside the Bay Area.

“There is a real need for carefully gathered data on not only where it’s been, but also where it’s going,” said infectious disease epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford, who is leading UCSF’s effort.

“There is a playbook of interventions that we can turn on or off, depending on what the situation is,” he said.

It’s not practical to test all 6.6 million residents of the Bay Area, said Rutherford.

“But this will give us a general sense of whether infections are creeping up again, or not. And where they’re creeping up,” he said. When combined with case counts and illness surveillance, “we can triangulate what’s going on.”

The second study, focused on 3,500 Bay Area healthcare

workers, will examine the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare systems and their workforce.

Its goal is to determine the rate at which these doctors, nurses and technicians acquire COVID-19 on the job — and whether antibodies protect them from reinfection, and if so, for how long.

Like the participants in the larger general study, the healthcare workers will be tested both for the virus and antibodies. But they’ll be tested more frequently — not monthly, but every week for at least three months. This study is led by infectious disease specialists Dr. Sarah Doernberg of UCSF, Dr. Marisa Holubar of Stanford and Dr. Vivek Jain of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

This study will help reveal the nature of immunity to COVID-19. It will also inform our frontline healthcare workers about the extent of their risk while caring for patients.

Founded by Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg in 2015, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a philanthropy that aims to leverage technology to help solve societal problems. Chan is a pediatrician and teacher; Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of Facebook.

“We are trying to do our part to answer the question of ‘How do we re-open as a community, as a society?’ “said Chan. “That is a super tricky question that our leaders in public health and state officials will

have to answer. But I am heartened by a desire to be driven by data.”

As the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative pondered how best to tackle the challenge, “We saw a lot of groups popping up and raising their hands, saying ‘I can answer this question!’ “she said.

It was inspired by “a deep desire to come together — UCSF and Stanford, with all-star scientists — on a mission of how can we be of service to answer some of the critical questions that would allow us to better understand COVID -19 and to support the critical decision-making that needs to come in the coming weeks and months?” said Chan.

All over the nation, there’s a growing body of research that shows that COVID-19 infection rates are far higher than confirmed cases suggest. Many people might not know they had been ill, or were unable to be tested.

A recent Santa Clara County study concluded that an estimated 2.5% to 4.2% of residents have antibodies to infection. In Los Angeles, an estimated 2.8% to 5.6% of the county’s adult population has antibodies. Hard-hit New York has a far higher prevalence, estimated to be 13.9% statewide; in New York City, infection is even more common, at 21.2%.

But these findings are controversial because participants weren’t randomly selected, so the conclusions may not accurately depict what’s happening in the general population. Some of the tests were outdated. There’s also criticism of their statistical methodologies.

Meanwhile, more representative studies with better tests are now

underway. But they’re typically onetime efforts that count infections in specific regions, such as East Bay communities, San Francisco’s Mission District and the Marin town of Bolinas.

The new Chan Zuckerberg Initiative project takes a different approach. It will include people from all walks of life, selected from mass mailings and public health and hospital primary care visits in the Bay Area. It will more accurately represent the diversity of the Bay Area, according to the Initiative.

And it will provide more than a single snapshot in time — rather, through repeated testing, it hopes to detect changes in the presence of the virus in the entire Bay Area.

“The knowledge we gain from these studies will be crucial to understanding the effects of COVID-19 on our region and protecting healthcare workers here and around the world. It’s inspiring to see researchers engaging in the kind of robust collaboration we will need to better understand and manage this crisis,” said Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, in a prepared statement.

It builds a foundation for science-based policies that can guide us through the challenging months ahead, according to UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood.

“Though we are still in the midst of responding to the first phases of this pandemic,” he said, “we must also look to the future.”