Establishing a Cost-efficient and Scalable COVID-19 Early Monitoring System at a Strategic Canadian Land Entry Point

Establishing a Cost-efficient and Scalable COVID-19 Early Monitoring System at a Strategic Canadian Land Entry Point

Establishing a Cost-efficient and Scalable COVID-19 Early Monitoring System at a Strategic Canadian Land Entry Point


Dr. Yufeng Tong

University of Windsor

FUNDER: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

GRANT DURATION: 2021-2022

Related Programs:
Nucleus Cores:

Windsor-Essex County can offer advanced warnings of spikes in infectious diseases because of its geographic location. It sits on the busiest border crossing between the USA and Canada with over thousands of residents commuting daily, the seasonal arrival of high concentrations of agriculture migrant workers from Central, South America and the Caribbean, and a post-secondary student population at the University of Windsor and St. Clair College highly integrated with local communities.

An inter-disciplinary team of UWindsor researchers are collaborating on a project to tackle COVID19 from multiple fronts using wastewater surveillance, SARS-CoV-2 bioinformatical analysis, and non-invasive saliva-based rapid qPCR testing. 

They aim to 1) detect emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, 2) provide molecular and structural information to prioritize variants of concern, 3) provide community-based surveillance to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks.

CO-INVESTIGATORS

University of Windsor

  • Dr. Lisa Porter
  • Dr. Mike McKay
  • Dr. Kendall Soucie
  • Dr. Kenneth Ng
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