Scientists at St Andrews University have been elisted to help in the battle against coronavirus.
Ministers have commissioned three studies at the Fife university, as part of the Scottish Government’s Covid-19 rapid research programme.
The government has assigned the academic research community to study diagnosis, management and mitigation of the impact of the virus and its aftermath in Scotland.
The St Andrews projects will start this month, with one aimed at giving a better idea of the true number of cases.
This study will extract information from a tracker app and link it with medical records, identifying community cases and exploring their differences with patients diagnosed in healthcare settings.
Scientists will also model the evolution of the virus under different social distancing strategies and create a mathematical model to simulate Covid-19 infection and spread and make predictions.
Each of the projects is expected to take around six weeks. They are led by Professor Colin McCowan, Dr Nathan Bailey and Dr Ruth Bowness.
Frank Sullivan, professor of primary care medicine at St Andrews, coordinated the project applications.
He said: “We were glad to be able to respond quickly to the government’s call for research into aspects of Covid-19 and will continue to play our part in the scientific effort to tackle and mitigate the threat of the virus.
“Many other projects are in development across the university building upon well-established programmes of research with world-leading expertise across the spectrum from basic science to policy, particularly in virology, data science and social science.”
