Stanford University School of Medicine Tuesday announced the availability of the Community Alliance to Test Coronavirus at Home (CATCH) study to estimate the true population prevalence of COVID-19 across the 8.5 million population of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, to help stop further undetected spread of COVID-19. in the effort to reopen schools, workplaces and communities.

The CATCH study is being led by Stanford Medicine researchers Yvonne Maldonado, MD, professor of paediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy, Lorene Nelson, MD, associate professor of health research and policy and Dr Stephen Quake, professor of bioengineering and of applied physics and co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.

Under the university's CATCH study, the home delivered self-collection kits will be rapidly deployed to carry out remote testing in a broad and representative sample of the population, including those underserved and vulnerable populations that might otherwise not be reached or tested. The study is enabled by the Vera Cloud Testing Platform including its novel Vera Home Test Kit, a gentle nasal swab self-collection kit that can be delivered directly to the homes of study participants by existing couriers and package delivery services.

Additionally, the CATCH Study is seeking participants in the San Francisco Bay Area to enroll for free. Every participant joins online, reports their symptoms and exposures to COVID-19 daily and may be offered a home test kit at no cost upon reporting. All tested participants are informed of their results online via personal password-protected account within the CATCH website, added the university.

All San Francisco Bay Area residents at least 18 years of age or older, including those with or without symptoms, residing in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco City & County, San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma can sign-up for the CATCH Study, concluded the university.