Webchat with Professor Tim Spector, the lead researcher behind the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app, on Wednesday at 2pm

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with Professor Tim Spector, the lead researcher behind the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app, on Wednesday 2 December at 2pm.

Professor Tim Spector OBE is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London and honorary consultant physician at Guys and St Thomas’ Hospitals. He is also an expert in personalised medicine and the gut microbiome and started the famous UK Twin Registry in 1993. He is the lead researcher behind the world’s biggest citizen science health project – the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app.

The COVID Symptom Study app is a not-for-profit initiative that was launched at the end of March 2020 to support vital COVID-19 research. The app was launched by health science company ZOE with scientific analysis provided by King’s College London.

This free tool has been used by more than 4 million people in the UK, US, and Sweden. The app identified new symptoms of the disease and risk factors as well as monitoring its progress to warn health authorities. The app is sponsored by the Welsh Government, NHS Wales, the Scottish Government & NHS Scotland.

As the UK’s largest citizen science project, they are now expanding to better understand COVID-19 in children. Here’s what they say about the ZOE COVID Symptom Study School Communities Programme:

“With over 1,000 schools signed up, we need parents and carers to take 1 minute a day to report any symptoms and COVID tests on behalf of their children via our app. All symptom and test reports for children are collected anonymously and aggregated by their school and bubble. Schools receive daily insights on a variety of key COVID metrics for each bubble, with some insights also shared with parents.”

“If your school isn't signed up, ask them to join us! And don't worry, all parents can log their children's health at any time whether your school is signed up or not.”

Please join us here on Wednesday at 2pm. If you can’t join us on the day, please leave your question here in advance.

As always, please remember our webchat guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil. Also if one topic is dominating a thread, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. (We may suspend the accounts of anyone who continues after we've posted to ask people to stop, so please take note.) Rest assured we will ALWAYS let the guest know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Many thanks,
MNHQ

@PerArduaAdNauseum

Thank you for answering my initial question, now I'm going to be one of the people asking what the blood type impact is?

You beat me to it! I think A+ has been mentioned.

Hi, I have pre existing SLE lupus and POTS.
I have long covid now. Or do I simply have double lupus and POTs?

Actually, @ProfTimSpector - could you debunk the accusations about the PCR test being too flawed to be useful please? I keep seeing reference to this, (usually Freedom Alliance types) but there's never any evidence provided

@LooSeatInTheSkyWithDiamonds

I've been using the app from the start and my DC's school is also signed up (as an aside I think asking for height and weight may put people off signing up if they don't know this information for their child). Speaking to a friend who is suffering with long covid, she said that some results had been misinterpreted (women over 50 being disproportionately affected, when actually it was because the majority of Zoe users are older women). I know at the start you were searching for elderly users rather than just the tech savvy younger generations. I'm interested to know the demographics of app users - do you have a good spread across the ages and split between sexes.

And on the sex point, I questioned the use of gender rather than sex and think the answer was something to with aligning with a US study. Surely sex is important to record? Or is the number of transgender so insignificant that it doesn't impact data (but then you don't know the impact on transgender people) and outweighs the risk of losing potential users who are scratching their head at the gender questions and not going any further?

@LooSeatInTheSkyWithDiamonds Most parents are not put off by the height and weight question - which are useful for our research. In all our analyses we adjust for the proportion of females and by age.

We now have a good spread from 0 to 85, although less at the extremes.

@AlphaJura

Thank you for the app. I listen to Dr John Campbell and he has been covering the findings of your research as it goes along. It's great that the data generally comes up with the same figures as ons.

What improvements (if any) do you think could be made in schools to reduce transmission and sickness rates given everything you've found out so far?

Hi AlphaJura. I think keeping children at home for 3- days if they develop early symptoms is the best way to stop the transmission. We need to stop children go into school in those first few days and being checked there. Ultimately, it's about the speed of which you can keep them away from the school environment and we know that they are only infectious for a short amount of time so just a few days at home right at the beginning would be better than keeping them away for 2 weeks with a positive test.

Wow, that's quite a range of ages! Thank you.

@LooSeatInTheSkyWithDiamonds

And a follow up question if I'm allowed...

What data/insights do participating schools get access to and what do you hope to learn from looking at schools.

Thank you! I think crowdsourcing data is a great way to study at scale, but not without its challenges. I'm very grateful for the insights that Zoe has and continues to highlight as we try to improve our understanding of covid.

@LooSeatInTheSkyWithDiamonds schools will benefit from knowing what's going on with their pupils, we will learn much more about symptoms and risk in children by getting this data. At the moment there is very little data on children in the population who don't go to hospital.

You can find out more at covid.joinzoe.com/schoolnetwork

@denfit

I would like to ask the professor what he thinks about moderate (clinically vulnerable) asthmatics being taken off the priority list for receiving the vaccine.

Does he think that, at the very least, under 50 asthmatics who have been defined as clinically vulnerable should get the vaccine ahead of under 50s who are not clinically vulnerable?

Thank you.

[Edited by MNHQ - changed ages by request]

@denfit these are very decisions. I don't think anyone has any clear answers. Hopefully by Spring everyone will have had access to vaccines.

@cbt944

Seeing the documentary The Diet Myth and then reading the book, and following suggestions to improve the gut microbiome has improved my physical and mental health immeasurably. Thank you!

Do you think a healthier, happier gut microbiome would help one if infected by Covid?

@cbt944 great question! All the data we have suggests that a gut-friendly diet will help our immune system and reduce symptoms of COVID.

We are doing a study using the microbiome to prove this.

You seem really confident both in the difference of symptoms in children v's adults, and the time frame for spreading infection. Is this likely to be passed to/from the DfE any time soon? Schools seem to have very different advice are are still insisting on temp/cough.

[quote slidingdrawers]@ProfTimSpector regarding Covid's impact on mental health, how can we best capture this? Could your app help? I recall a question concerning diet and lifestyle a few months back, could something similar be used? [/quote]
@slidingdrawers we added mental health issues as a COVID symptom recently and we're planning on adding it as a lifestyle question too.

We're also keen to explore how lockdowns have affected people's mental health.

If you're interested in learning more read this blog: covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-anxiety-tips

@ProfTimSpector Im surprised there aren't more studies into children and covid. I'm pleased Zoe is looking into it, it will be interesting to see what you find out. Thank you.

@PerArduaAdNauseum

Thank you for answering my initial question, now I'm going to be one of the people asking what the blood type impact is?

@PerArduaAdNauseum early analysis suggests that blood type O is the good one to have.

@PerArduaAdNauseum

Actually, *@ProfTimSpector* - could you debunk the accusations about the PCR test being too flawed to be useful please? I keep seeing reference to this, (usually Freedom Alliance types) but there's never any evidence provided

@PerArduaAdNauseum the PCR test is actually very useful at picking up cases accurately. It will miss some cases (about 30%) but only produces false positives very rarely.

@fuchsiagold

Hi, I have pre existing SLE lupus and POTS. I have long covid now. Or do I simply have double lupus and POTs?

@fuchsiagold that's a tricky one!

@Varjakpaw

You seem really confident both in the difference of symptoms in children v's adults, and the time frame for spreading infection. Is this likely to be passed to/from the DfE any time soon? Schools seem to have very different advice are are still insisting on temp/cough.

@Varjakpaw we'll try to discuss this with the DofH to change the advice for schools. We're willing to share our data with the DofE, who sound a little out of date.

Thank you for all your really interesting questions! Hopefully I got round to answering all of them. The ZOE COVID Symptom Study app is a really important tool in the fight against COVID-19 in the UK, so please do share our app with as many people as possible - keep safe and keep logging, Prof Tim Spector.

To stay up to date on all the latest news from the app please head to some of these links:
covid.joinzoe.com/
www.youtube.com/zoe-health
@timspector on Twitter

I received lots of nutrition based questions so if you’d like to find out more about nutrition, why don't you follow some of these pages:

joinzoe.com/
www.instagram.com/zoe/

Thanks so much to Prof Spector and to everyone who joined the webchat - we hope you found it useful! We will close this thread now.