01 Feb Fighting COVID-19: Our contributions to the ORFEU Project.
To combat COVID-19, the Catalan government implemented the ORFEU project which aimed at mass PCR testing to try and curb the disease. Members of our lab were very active in making this project a success.
Members of our lab co-authored a major publication on the gearing of scientific research centres into a approved COVID diagnostic centres.
The COVID-19 pandemic has posed and is continuously posing enormous societal and health challenges worldwide. The research community has mobilized to develop novel projects to find a cure or a vaccine, as well as to contribute to mass testing, which has been a critical measure to contain the infection in several countries.
Ritobrata Ghose, Antoni Ganez, Laura Pascual and Natalia Pardo together with other volunteers of the ORFEU project published an article where they share their experiences and learnings as a group of volunteers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain. As members of the ORFEU project, an initiative by the Government of Catalonia to achieve mass testing of people at risk and contain the epidemic in Spain, they share their motivations, challenges and the key lessons learnt in order to help better prepare the global society to address similar situations in the future.
Ghose R, Aranguren-Ibáñez Á, Arecco N et al. From research to rapid response: mass COVID-19 testing by volunteers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation. F1000Research 2020, 9:1336 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.27497.1)
An image adapted from the publication showing some of the volunteers.
A first hand and personal account of the ORFEU project from within.
Rito, a PhD student in our lab also published an article earlier in 2020, titled “You are never prepared for this” – an opinion article on the COVID-19 testing experience, which is a first hand account of how the ORFEU project took shape through the contributions of researchers at CRG. Definitely give it a read if you haven’t already!
