The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is issuing this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) in response to the declared public health emergency issued by the Secretary, HHS, for 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). NIH is issuing this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) to highlight the urgent need for accelerating research on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). This emergency NOSI provides an expedited funding mechanism as part of the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Radical (RADx-rad) initiative. The funding for this initiative is provided from the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, 2020. NIH is seeking applications from current NLM R01 awardees that can, in one or two years, enhance public health infrastructure for predicting and monitoring viral disease outbreaks.

To predict the spread of COVID-19 and identify potential ‘hot spots’ where intensive testing is needed, public health officials and health care organizations need data on the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in and around their communities. These data, in combination with data on demographic and environmental factors affecting the health status of local populations can lead to improved prediction of and response to pandemic conditions. Computational and analytic methods can quickly bring together genomic, viromic, and health data with environmental data such as wastewater contamination, in a secure way to provide visualizations and predictions that help local officials track the presence, spread and impact of SARS-Cov-2 and the scope of testing needed.

Applications are expected to focus on informatics and data science methods to help address wastewater surveillance to identify ‘hot spot’ geographic areas for public response, handling data in a secure way that protects personal privacy.

Applications will be accepted immediately through August 21, 2020.

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