Do you know of anything else that feels similar to this? People in public areas collecting biological samples from volunteers (perhaps lightly compensated).
Afraid not. The closest I can think of is collecting samples from healthy volunteers without any benefit to them, but not in public areas. In particular, I’m thinking of swabbing in primary health settings (eg RGCP/UKHSA run something like this in England, I can’t remember if it only includes those with respiratory symptoms) and testing blood donations (normally serological testing looking for antibodies). REACT (run by Imperial College) did swabbing for COVID via postal recruitment.
A bit of an aside, so maybe not of interest, however, this made me think of serological testing of residual blood samples. That is, when blood is collected for testing (for any clinical reason), not all of it is used in the tests, and the remaining (residual) part is tested. Here, there are no sample collection costs (the blood was collected anyway). However, it doesn’t map exactly because you don’t swab people without respiratory suspicion but you might take blood (eg anemia). Maybe there is an opportunity for either testing blood samples for pathogens (but I have no idea what that looks like) or samples taken for other respiratory reasons (but then you need to think about co-infection, ie does infection with influenza make you less likely to have another respiratory infection).
Finally, some shameless self-promotion. I’m currently nearing PhD competition with nothing lined up. If there are projects looking at these sorts of questions interested in modelling / stats / epidemiology input I’d be very interested, please DM. Please ignore this if unappreciated.
Afraid not. The closest I can think of is collecting samples from healthy volunteers without any benefit to them, but not in public areas. In particular, I’m thinking of swabbing in primary health settings (eg RGCP/UKHSA run something like this in England, I can’t remember if it only includes those with respiratory symptoms) and testing blood donations (normally serological testing looking for antibodies). REACT (run by Imperial College) did swabbing for COVID via postal recruitment.
A bit of an aside, so maybe not of interest, however, this made me think of serological testing of residual blood samples. That is, when blood is collected for testing (for any clinical reason), not all of it is used in the tests, and the remaining (residual) part is tested. Here, there are no sample collection costs (the blood was collected anyway). However, it doesn’t map exactly because you don’t swab people without respiratory suspicion but you might take blood (eg anemia). Maybe there is an opportunity for either testing blood samples for pathogens (but I have no idea what that looks like) or samples taken for other respiratory reasons (but then you need to think about co-infection, ie does infection with influenza make you less likely to have another respiratory infection).
Finally, some shameless self-promotion. I’m currently nearing PhD competition with nothing lined up. If there are projects looking at these sorts of questions interested in modelling / stats / epidemiology input I’d be very interested, please DM. Please ignore this if unappreciated.