The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted nearly every facet of our lives, from health care infrastructure to educational delivery to interactions with family and friends. Together with our philanthropic partners, UC San Diego is poised to define the next phase of our local COVID-19 response — and in the process, lay the groundwork for a forward-looking global solution. With your help, we can expand clinical testing and accelerate research projects to better understand and track COVID-19, as well as assist displaced and impacted members of our UC San Diego community. Together, we can protect the health and safety of everyone in San Diego and beyond.
From on-campus efforts including the Return to Learn Program and Research Ramp Up to community-wide initiatives like our partnership with San Diego Unified School District to start administering PCR testing to get student and staff back in the classroom and UC San Diego Health as a testing site for three major vaccine trials, we are uniting research institutions and mobilizing our university clinicians, molecular biologists, technologists, infectious disease experts, bioinformatics specialists, disease modelers, public health experts and others to define a safe path forward for our campus and community to return to in-person activities.
Other Ways UC San Diego Is Taking on COVID-19
Expanding clinical testing
In collaboration with corporate partners, deploy and validate newly developed clinical tests
Develop new COVID-19 tests to provide low-cost, rapid results (<1 hour)
Develop home testing kits for COVID-19
Regular no-cost testing for UC San Diego students, faculty and staff
Developing new therapies for treatment and vaccine
Identify and test new drugs, by drawing on the wide array of drug discovery pipelines and our clinical testing capabilities to develop new drugs to improve the outcome of infected patients and health care workers
Develop monoclonal antibody therapies and vaccines, by drawing upon our expertise in immunology
Understanding the COVID-19 virus
Study the viral replication cycle and the role played by genetic variation in disease progression and transmission from animals to humans, by drawing upon our expertise in virology and genetics, to better understand this family of dangerous viruses and prepare for the next variant with pandemic potential
Understand the role the immune system plays in disease progression, and the mechanisms by which pre-existing conditions increase the probability of infection and/or severe disease
Improving environmental and community health
Study COVID-19 exposure and transmission, using cutting edge technologies with high sensitivity, to better understand exposure pathways indoors, outdoors, on surfaces, water, air and animals
Deploy molecular epidemiological approaches to track the spread of the disease, incorporating new COVID-19 diagnostics into existing cohort studies as well as launching new studies