Rutgers COVID-19 Cohort Study

Our long-term goal is to protect the health care workforce (HCW) caring for SARS-CoV-2-infected patients, their families, communities, and the general population. Our specific objective is to rapidly establish a prospective cohort to characterize the factors related to viral transmission and disease severity in a large healthcare system. We addressed this hypothesis by recruiting and longitudinally following 546 HCW and a comparison group of 283 non-HCW within a large academic health system, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS). By intensively following participants over a several year period (2020-2024) and collecting serial biospecimens (nasopharyngeal/throat swabs, blood, and saliva) and questionnaire data at multiple time points, we will uniquely characterize SARS-CoV-2 transmission and risk factors for COVID-19 among HCW and our larger academic community.