Bradford Hill Seminar

Wed 7 May

online

Victoria Hall of the UK Health Security Agency will discuss what has been learned from The SARS-CoV-2 Immunity and Reinfection Evaluation (SIREN) study, a prospective cohort study of hospital-based healthcare workers across the UK.

SIREN was established in 2020 as a pandemic response study, with over 44,000 healthcare workers recruited from 135 NHS trusts/health boards. The study initially investigated SARS-CoV-2 reinfections and the durability of immunity following infection, and subsequently COVID-19 vaccination. It has expanded its scope to evaluate Winter Pressures on the healthcare workforce, and questions related to immunity more broadly.

SIREN+ has been running since 2024. This has involved collecting data on symptoms and absence from time off work trends in around 5000 participants recruited from the original SIREN cohort. In addition to investigating Winter Pressures, SIREN+ provides an opportunity to address new research questions of public health importance that impact healthcare workers, including the emergence of multidrug resistant organisms and risk factors for healthcare associated infections.

More details on the study and publications from the study can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/siren-study

About Victoria Hall
Victoria Hall is a Consultant Epidemiologist in the Antimicrobial Resistance & Healthcare Associated Infections Division of the UK Health Security Agency and has been leading the SIREN study team since 2020. She completed public health speciality training in the East of England and the UK Field Epidemiology Training Programme based in South East and London Regional Field Epidemiology Service. She holds a part-time position at the Institute for Health Informatics, UCL working on research on infections and AMR in care homes with the VIVALDI study.