St. Luke’s Wraps Up COVID-19 Research Study

DULUTH, Minn. — A COVID-19 research study wrapped up this week at St. Luke’s after collecting data from hundreds of frontline workers for nearly three years.

The study started near the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020, and started enrolling local participants in August 2020.

Throughout the study, each participant would swap for the disease once a week.

The data collected allows the researchers to exam how COVID moved through populations.

The study also researched the effectiveness of vaccines, how COVID changed over time, the symptoms of a positive participant, and much more.

“Learning how they behave when they go through a population is incredibly valuable, I think the lessons we learn from COVID will serve us well into the future if we ever do have another pandemic in our life time and certainly the next time it happens,” said Dr. Harmony Tyner, St. Luke’s Infectious Disease Specialist.

Today St. Luke’s celebrated their participants and researchers.

St. Luke’s was one of six organizations in the study, including major health care companies and universities across the United States such as the University of Arizona.

Using the data St. Luke’s says they will have a better understanding of a pandemic in case of one in the future.

“Pandemics happen about once every hundred years and with increase in population and increase in travel, it’s not unreasonable to think they could happen more often then that, and not because anything is changing so much but bacteria and viruses are everywhere, and they change much faster then people change,” said Tyner.

While the study stopped collecting data earlier this week, they will continue to analyze their findings for more information surrounding the pandemic.