The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $1 million, six-month grant to Jay Varma, MD, to study how countries around the world monitored and responded to COVID-19.
Dr. Varma, a professor of population health sciences at New York City-based Weill Cornell Medicine, will focus his research on the challenges and opportunities of publicly reporting disease surveillance information. The project aims to fully understand how local, regional and national governments report disease so that they are better prepared for the next pandemic, according to a Nov. 4 Weill Cornell news release provided to Becker's.
Their research team will analyze disease reporting systems using data from WHO member states. Most recently, Dr. Varma served as senior adviser for public health to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
"The COVID-19 pandemic heightened awareness of the weaknesses of infectious disease surveillance systems worldwide," Dr. Varma said. "For example, there were many variations in the reporting of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, and data was not always integrated with other essential information, such as vaccination status or laboratory testing results.