March 5, 2020

COVID-19 Announcements

As a research lab that focuses on respiratory viruses in the current epicenter of the US COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve getting a lot of questions via email and phone. Hopefully the information below can help with some of your queries while we work through the many messages we’ve received:

If you believe you may have coronavirus or may have been exposed, please stay home and call your healthcare provider. If you want more information about COVID-19 please visit the Public Health – Seattle & King County resources.

If you have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus by a healthcare provider and are 18 years or older you may be eligible to participant in one of our research studies helping develop treatments and vaccines against COVID-19. Email us at haarvi@uw.edu for more information.

If you have any media inquiries for Dr. Chu about the novel coronavirus, all press communication must first go through UW’s PR firm (mediarelations@uw.edu) and possibly the SFS’s PR group (seattleflustudy@porternovelli.com) as well if you have questions relating to the study’s response to the outbreak. General inquiries for the Seattle Flu Study can still be directed to seattleflu@uw.edu.

The Seattle Flu Study has been mentioned a few times in the media since the outbreak, including this New York Times article and this press release from the Gates Foundation. Dr. Chu has been busy communicating with various press outlets as well, including this brief interview with NPR, this interview with MedPage Today, another with The Atlantic, and King5 News.

If you have any symptoms of a respiratory illness, you can continue to enroll in the Seattle Flu Study online here. At this time we can only report test results for flu and RSV. Our community kiosks for in-person enrollments are currently shutdown while we investigate safety precautions for our study staff.

Additionally, the Seattle Flu Symposium has been postponed until further notice as many of the speakers are busy dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.

Dr Chu has recently joined Twitter, you can follow her @HelenChuMD for updates about our study and the novel coronavirus. Other study updates will continue to be online at seattleflu.org but as mentioned above, your local Department of Health and the CDC are the best resources for information about COVID-19.

Stay safe and wash your hands!

-The Chu Lab Team