ULB, UCLouvain, Université de Montréal
" OBJ: 1) Observe interprofessional and interorganisational collaboration "in the making" in crisis situation: how professional groups organize and collaborate (within and between professional groups) in different organizational contexts (liberal practice, primary care delivery services, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.) especially for vulnerable groups. 2) Analyse the role of regulatory bodies governmental agencies, professional associations) in managing healthcare professions and interprofessional collaboration in crisis situations 3)Improving future care and the resilience of health systems METH: Collection and analysis of documents (instructions, tools, etc.), qualitative interviews, in situ observations. Developing Grounded theory "
Funding: Research team is part of BeHive - Interdisciplinary primary care Chair, funded by the King Baudouin Foundation (Fund Dr. Daniel De Coninck)
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ZENTECH SA
" Development of specific IVD products to detect the patient serology due to the infection with SARS-COV2 Developement based on ISO13485, Directives 98/79/EC standards. Different technologies approched : ELISA, RT-PCR, lateral flow "
Contact: Alain Bosseloir COO ZenTech sa Liege Science Park Avenue du Pré Aily 10 4031 Angleur

ULB
"Our objectives are: • To study maternal and neonate COVID-19 information in the Belgian-Obstetric Surveillance System database: clinical presentation and natural history of disease, pregnancy-related basic information, pregnancy outcomes, birth characteristics, infant morbidity and mortality. • To study the core socio-demographic information to potentially identify groups at higher risk of complications • Build a more informative dataset thanks to data mining of public databases This study will enable us to understand the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women and their offspring in Belgium, and in the world via the contribution to the INOSS multicenter study. It might allow us to define an at-risk population among pregnant women and their offspring, and tailor epidemiologic and clinical interventions for these more vulnerable individuals."
Funding: Pending (FNRS)
Publication References: "1. The International Network of Obstetric Survey Systems study of uterine rupture: a...

Read more: Caroline Daelemans, Professor

GIGA - ULiège - FNRS
" Covid-19 is associated with a high risk of thrombotic disease, both in the venous and arterial circulations. As President of the Belgian Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis (BSTH), I am coordinating the creation of national algorithms for thromboprophylaxis and anticoagulation of Covid-19 patients by a group of experts. These algorithms will be included in the Sciensano Covid-19 guidelines. "
Publication References: In preparation
Contact: Cécile Oury, PhD President of the Belgian Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Director F.R.S.-FNRS Head of the Laboratory of Cardiology GIGA-Cardiovascular Sciences University of Liège (B34) 1 Avenue de l'Hôpital 4000 Liège (Sart-Tilman) Belgium Tel: +32 (0)4 366 24 87 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Institut Jules Bordet, ULB - FNRS
" Cancer patients under active treatment are thought to be highly vulnerable with regards to the current pandemic of COVID-19 disease. Their management has drastically changed over the past weeks, as clinics have been forced to adapt their care strategies according to national guidelines, postponing all non-essential consultations and having patients avoid the clinic altogether as much as possible. However, it is currently unclear if cancer patients are indeed at a higher risk of developing COVID-19 disease, and if systemic oncological treatment contributes to more severe disease because of suppression of the immune system, or rather protects against fatal cytokine release storms and acute respiratory distress syndromes. This information is absolutely crucial for the safety assessment of using cancer treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the monitoring of cancer patients during this period. Therefore, this project is a non-interventional...

Read more: Christos Sotiriou, FNRS Research Director

DNAlytics
" Research projects : contributions to research projects with academics and hospital representatives (-omics data investigations, biomarkers and multi-marker indicators, stratification of populations, predictive models for diagnosis/prognosis, ... Development / production capabilities: internal processes and quality system compatible with ISO.13485 (medical devices). Skills and expertise: data sciences, machine learning and other technologies from artificial intelligence; statistics, bio-IT; model encapsulation into software, mobile apps or web platforms "
Funding: Prestations sub-contracted by lead researchers, or partnerships through regional/EU projects with public funding.
Publication References: Complete list on www.dnalytics.com/publications/ 
Contact : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Erasme Hospital
" Objectifs : L'épidémie du coronavirus a eu des conséquences délétères sur la santé mentale de la population générale1,2. Aucune étude ne s'est encore penchée sur l'impact psychologique du coronavirus sur les proches des patients ayant été infectés par le covid-19. Cette étude permet de comparer les proches de patients survivants ayant séjourné ou n'ayant pas séjourné en soins intensifs, des proches de patients décédés. Méthodologie : Les familles (N=200) dont le proche a séjourné en soins intensifs ou en unité COVID à l'hôpital Erasme seront contactées par téléphone et invitées à compléter des questionnaires en ligne au minimum 1 mois après la sortie d'hospitalisation de leur proche, ou après son décès, et ensuite 6 mois après la première évaluation. Les variables psychologiques qui seront évaluées sont : (1) la qualité de vie (The Mc Gill Quality of Life Questionnaire), les symptômes anxieux et dépressifs (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, HADS), les...

Read more: Delphine Canivet, PhD

ULB
" I wrote two pieces, one on the difficulty inherent to the evaluation of effects of Covid-19 counter-measures, and one which argues that the crisis calls for a paradigm shift in global health policies towards systemic, preventive, and holitistic health policies "
Publication References: Paul E, Brown GW, Ridde V. COVID-19: time for paradigm shift in the nexus between local, national and global health. BMJ Global Health 2020;5:e002622. Paul E, Ridde V. Évaluer les effets des différentes mesures de lutte contre le Covid-19, mission impossible ? The Conversation, 5 avril 2020 (https://theconversation.com/evaluer-les-effets-des-differentes-mesures-de-lutte-contre-le-covid-19-mission-impossible-135060)
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ULiège
"DECONTAMINATION AND REUSE OF SURGICAL MASKS AND FILTERING FACEPIECE RESPIRATORS The global test protocol, presented in this project, aims to assess: a) the effectiveness of several decontamination methods with regard to integrity (""barrier"" function) and the quality of surgical masks and filtering facepiece respirators FFP2/N95; b) the efficacy of these decontamination methods on the inactivation of a coronavirus, similar to the SARS-CoV-2 virus present on surgical masks and filtering facepiece respirators FFP2/N95. Moreover, the present project aims to set up a consortium of companies and laboratories to meet the diverse and varied requests for ""reuse"" of various medical protective equipment (masks, filters, clothing, etc.) linked with the environmental approach."
Funding: Walloon Government
Contact: https://www.news.uliege.be/cms/c_11717821/fr/l-uliege-coordonne-le-projet-wallon-de-decontamination-des-masques-chirurgicaux-et-de-protection-respiratoire-ffp2...

Read more: Eric Haubruge, Professeur ordinaire - Etienne Thiry, Professeur ordinaire - Georges Daube,...

UCLouvain/IREC/MBLG
" The objective of this project is to perform SARS CoV-2 infection of cells from Vero E6 line. With a view to -Study the information of the infection on the immune activation pathways and the metabolic pathways within the cells - Perform virus viability assays in different environments and analyze the effectiveness of the hygiene measures taken to prevent transmission of the virus into the environment. - Study the neutralization and the cytopathogenic effect by antibodies from clinical samples "
Funding: own funding
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Professor UCLouvain/Cliniques universitaires St-Luc This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., PhD UCLouvain

ULB
" Learning from the curve is a voluntary and open source research project on COVID-19 and economics. It is a joint initiative of researchers in economics at ECARES, Solvay, ULB. Our mission is to provide detailed and real-time information and visualizations on COVID-19 and economics for the general public and the press, to serve as a platform for research collaboration on these topics, to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the economic tissue of countries and regions, to provide policy recommendations based on scientific arguments supported by data analytics. Learning from the curve started as a voluntary effort of faculty and students in empirical economics at ECARES. We are also very grateful for funding from the Special COVID-19 ULB grant. None of this would be possible without either. We call data from various sources, which are referenced in the respective dashboards and articles. We provide data sources and code on our Github organization. All publicly available data, code...

Read more: Glenn Magerman, Professor - Mathias Dewatripont, Professor - Bram De Rock, Professor

UCLouvain
" This research project aims at studying the conditions under which the modern welfare state could build a kind of epidemics insurance, while paying a particular attention to the issue of fairness. The global objective of saving lives may be associated to policies that have undesirable distributive effects, against ideals of social justice. The project aims at finding ways to make mass prevention and equity compatible. "
Funding: This project will be part of my research load at UCLouvain, within the Hoover Chair in Economic ans Social Ethics.
Publication References: Fleurbaey, M., Ponthiere, G. (2013). Prevention against Equality ? Journal of Public Economics. Fleurbaey, M., Leroux, ML, Ponthiere, G. (2014). Compensating the dead. Journal of Mathematical Economics. Fleurbaey, M., Leroux, ML., Pestieau, P., Ponthiere G. (2016). Fair retirement under risk lifetime. International Economic Review. Leroux, ML., Ponthiere, G. (2018). Working time regulations, unequal lifetime and...

Read more: Gregory Ponthiere, Professor

UCLouvain
" Thanks to high-throughput sequencing of the strains collected for the diagnosis, we document the viral spread within health care facilities. A better understanding of the virus transmission chains are key to evaluate the efficacy of hygiene measures that were implemented to avoid cross-contamination between patients and health care workers. A secondary objective is the analysis of clinical data related to the patients, in order to search genotypic differences that may possibly explain divergent pathogenic courses. "
Funding: Own funding, submitted calls.
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., PhD Chercheur qualifié at UCLouvain/IREC/MBLG This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Clinical biologist at Cliniques universitaires St-Luc This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Professor UCLouvain/Cliniques universitaires St-Luc

ULiège and CHU de Liège
" BACKGROUND The SARS-CoV2 or COVID-19 infection is unique in terms of its speed of spread, the importance of structural medical reorganization, the length of resuscitation stays sometimes required, the diversity of the affected population, especially young or fragile subjects, and the impacts on physical and mental health generated by this pandemic and the prolonged confinement of populations. Muscle damage related to immobility, inflammation, corticosteroids, hypoxemia associated with pulmonary and cardiac damage, and metabolic damage (undernutrition), all sometimes linked to the infection, suggests weak or major functional repercussions, already described in SARS patients. Thus, the patients most affected by COVID-19 require acute hospital management and sometimes complex rehabilitation management. Retrospective studies of the functional capacities of patients with SARS of viral origin show the persistence of functional impairment at a distance from the...

Read more: Jean-François Kaux, Professor

UCLouvain - FNRS
" Through partnerships with Universities in South countries, information on available techniques and support to local trainings obtained from several national and international colleagues and platforms will be made available to health services in these institutions. "
Contact: Prof. J.-P. Coutelier de Duve Institute Universite Catholique de Louvain SSS/DDUV - ICP Av. Hippocrate 75, bte B1.74.05 1200 Woluwe-Saint-Lambert Belgique tel 32 2 764 7437 fax 32 2 764 7430 e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Comment: Support will be provided at the request of health services from South countries and differs therefore from one country to another. Funding is provided by ARES-CCD