ICMR proposes national registry to study Covid-19 in detail

After eight months and more than 20 lakh cases, Indian Council of Medical Research has initiated a process to establish a national clinical registry of Covid-19 to systematically investigate various aspects of the pandemic in India.

In the registry, ICMR seeks to enrol at least 100 hospitals representing every region and hotspot cities. They would be mentored by 15 tertiary care hospitals such as All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi; National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru and Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Puducherry.

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"The process to set up the registry has been initiated. It should be up and running within a month,” Aparna Mukherjee, a senior ICMR scientist associated with the project told DH.

The aim is to analyse patient data to study the natural course of the Covid-19 in India, disease spectrum, prognostic factors, risk factors and how Covid-19 impacts those suffering from tuberculosis and malnutrition. The study would initially be carried out for one year but can be extended later depending on the requirement.

"In the registry, we plan to collect Covid-19 information from hospitalised patients. There are similar registries in the USA and other developed countries,” she said.

When it's operational, the National Clinical Registry of Covid-19 will generate weekly reports, help formulate patient management protocols and develop policy guidelines for decision making and understand the predictors of disease severity so that patient management protocols can be optimised accordingly.

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Each of the 15 mentor institutes has been assigned different states so that they reach out to the Covid-19 hospitals in those states and enrol them as study sites if they are willing.

NIMHANS is responsible for Karnataka while AIIMS, Delhi will cater to Delhi and Bihar. JIPMER will cover Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry whereas Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad will look after Telangana.

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Some of the other mentor hospitals are AIIMS, Bhubaneswar (Odisha); AIIMS, Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh); AIIMS Raipur (Chhattishgarh, Jharkhand); AIIMS, Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Armed Forces Medical College, Pune (Maharashtra, Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli) and King George Medical University Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh).

Among other things, such a registry would also help understand variations in clinical signs and symptoms and spectrum of diseases in India as compared to other affected countries.