What participation in the study entails

If you choose to participate in the study, you will receive a home visit by healthcare professionals several times over a two-month period and once again after 6 months. Nose/throat and saliva swabs will be taken, together with blood samples. Not all samples need to be taken at each visit. Only saliva swabs will be taken from children under 12 years.

Sampling will take about 10-30 minutes per participant.

At the first visit, you will be asked to complete a questionnaire about yourself and your health and your household. This will take about 10 minutes. In addition, you will be asked to keep a simple symptom diary for 28 days after the first visit.

The airway sample and possibly the saliva sample will be analysed as soon as possible to determine if you are infected with the coronavirus.

Information collected in this study will not affect your possibilities for diagnosis and treatment if you become infected with coronavirus. You will be treated and followed-up like any other patient with an infection.

Benefits and disadvantages of participating

By participating in the study, you will help us together with the WHO with gaining important knowledge on the disease and how it spreads, as well as knowledge on the body's immune defence to coronavirus infection. The results will provide important knowledge that can be used in WHO's global advice about handling of the coronavirus pandemic and help to limit further spread of the virus.

If you are a household member of someone with coronavirus infection, by participating you will be able to find out if you are infected with coronavirus during the follow-up period, as we analyse your samples and tell you the test results as soon as they are ready. If you become infected with coronavirus, you will receive the same treatment and follow-up as other patients.

The disadvantage of participating is that the nasal/throat samples and blood samples can cause some discomfort. Your participation will not involve any kind of medical treatment or action other than the actual sampling, and will not entail any health risk or need for special insurance.

Voluntary participation and consent

Participation in the project is voluntary. For the household to be included, at least two of the household members must participate. If you wish to participate, you must sign the declaration of consent on the last page of the information brochure. You can withdraw your consent for further participation in the study at any time and without stating a reason. If you specifically ask for it, the information already collected about you can be deleted and the blood samples can be destroyed, unless the data have already been included in analyses or used in scientific publications. This will have no consequences for you or your treatment if you later become infected with coronavirus.

If at any time you wish to withdraw or have questions about the project, you can contact us on 911 50 171 or send an email to Korona-hus@fhi.no.

How do we process and store sample results and information about you and your household?

All information and test results will be stored in unidentified form (name and birth number replaced with a code) in a secure data area at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

The coupling key that links the code to your personal information is stored separately in an access-controlled and password-protected database at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Only a few project staff have access to this key.

It will not be possible to identify any of the participants in the results of the study when they are published.

Your samples will be stored in our research biobank. Some of the samples will be analysed immediately, while others will be frozen for later analysis. The samples will not be marked with personal data, only a code as described above. Further processing, including analysis and storage of analysis results, will be in de-identified form.

It may be appropriate to use your de-identified samples and study data in studies of other respiratory tract infections, for example, in the event of future coronavirus outbreaks. In the consent form below, there is a separate field that you can tick if you agree that we can use your study data and samples for this within the project period.

The project samples will be destroyed at the end of the project (currently set to 2030), and the information about you will be anonymised or deleted five years after the end of the project.