Canadian COVID-19 Emergency Department Rapid Response Network

The Canadian COVID-19 Emergency Department Rapid Response Network (CCEDRRN, pronounced SE-DRIN) is a national collaboration with Public Health partners to harmonize data collection related to COVID-19 in fifty Emergency Departments (EDs) across 8 provinces (BC, AB, SK, MB, ON, QC, NS, NB). When the pandemic struck, Emergency physicians lacked high-quality evidence for many diagnostic and treatment decisions made for patients with suspected or confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). With the financial support of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF) and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), CCEDRRN generated a high-quality clinical dataset on patients who presented to EDs and were tested for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2).

Most data were collected from retrospective chart review. Phone follow-ups with patients captured the contextual, social and cultural variables, vaccine status and patient-reported quality of life. In June of 2021, on behalf of CCEDRRN, Dr Archambault was granted additional funding from CIHR to investigate the Post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC). The phone follow-up questionnaire was adapted to assess PCC issues in ED patients. Additional funding provided by the Long COVID Web in 2023 allowed for the continuation of work on the PCC.

Overall, the fifty participating emergency departments enrolled over 208,000 patients into the registry. In addition, data on 12,000 participants have been collected to better understand the Post-COVID-19 Condition. To date, 23 manuscripts have been published by CCEDRRN investigators and 10 more are in progress.

Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, no. NCT04702945