The VACCELERATE Volunteer Registry is now open in Italy.
This database, developed in the context of the clinical research network VACCELERATE, offers the opportunity for people to register themselves to participate in COVID-19 vaccine and other clinical trials. “We are very happy to start the Volunteer Registry in Italy now”, says Prof. Oliver A. Cornely, coordinator of VACCELERATE: “Our Italian partners have done a great job. All information and the registration survey have been translated to Italian and we are looking forward to a lot of Italian volunteers in the near future.”
The EU funded VACCELERATE project, launched in February 2021, is led by the University Hospital Cologne, Germany and currently involves 29 partners from 18 European countries and 5 EU-associated countries. VACCELERATE has been created to enable Europe to be prepared in the event of a pandemic as it aims to create a network of clinical sites of excellence that can be promptly involved to participate in studies on new vaccines. The ultimate goal is to obtain results that can be useful for the health of the population, as quickly and effectively as possible.
VACCELERATE has also created the Volunteer Registry (www.vaccelerate.eu/volunteer-registry), a tool through which it aims to involve the general population by providing direct access to trials on new vaccines for infectious diseases. The Volunteer Registry is open to both adults and children and will collect information on demographics, travel distance to next research center, previous COVID-19 infection, vaccination status and any other information on the person's health conditions. Once an experimental vaccine study is available, potential participants will be invited to participate based on information voluntarily reported in the registry. Interested persons will decide independently if they wish to contact the organizers of the study to receive more information and possibly take part in it.
The Volunteer Registry is currently up and running in 15 EU member states and to date, over 36,000 individuals have registered and more than 14,000 registered individuals have been connected to clinical trials. The Volunteer Registry, fully translated into the Italian language, has recently been launched also in Italy, with the support of the University of Verona who is the appointed national coordinator for Italy in the VACCELERATE project.
Prof. Evelina Tacconelli, scientific coordinator of VACCELERATE for the University of Verona says “The Volunteer Registry is a key instrument in the safeguarding of Public Health and will help accelerate the processes and results of scientific research with the help of every individual European citizen. It will allow all citizens, if they deem it useful for their health, to access newly developed information and vaccinations against emerging infections”. If you need further information or if you are interested in enrolling in the registry, please follow the following link https://www.vaccelerate.eu/volunteer-registry/
See Italian media for relevant articles:
VACCELERATE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement N°101037867
