Coronavirus Action Fund: Helping Win the Global Race against COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters a third year, and variants such as Omicron continue to emerge, identification of effective treatments remains critical.

Thanks to the generosity of you, our donors, the RBWH Foundation Coronavirus Action Fund continues to help fund the global search for treatments and patient care protocols through the Australasian COVID-19 (ASCOT) Trial.

More than 1500 patients have been recruited from 42 hospitals across Australia, New Zealand, India and Nepal.

Australia would be behind the eight ball if it wasn’t for the Coronavirus Action Fund.

Professor David Paterson, RBWH Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician

We need to be developing new therapies against COVID, testing what really works, what doesn’t work, the best way to prevent COVID and the best way to prevent long-COVID.

It is expected that ASCOT reporting will make a substantial contribution to existing global knowledge and datasets.

One of the key findings has been ruling out convalescent plasma, which is manufactured from the blood of recovered patients, as an effective therapy.

It’s important for us to know when a therapy doesn’t work, because there’s nothing worse than giving patients false hope at the expense of a lot of other people’s time.

The next focus will be prevention of blood clots.

I’d like to thank everybody who has contributed to the Coronavirus Action Fund, because we know that without this amazing support researchers and doctors like myself just couldn’t get the results that we really need.

Your support of the Coronavirus Action Fund is helping fund these ongoing COVID-19 research projects:

• The impact of life-support equipment on COVID-19 drugs

• Long-term COVID-19 side-effects

• The impact of telehealth/virtual care on Heart Failure and Pulmonary Rehabilitation patient care

• Face time and virtual visiting of patients in ICU

• Changes in gestational diabetes testing

• Impacts on maternal depression and related disorders

• A new fast, low-cost COVID-19 test

• RBWH Emergency Operations Centre’s response to COVID-19: barriers and enablers

• RBWH Specialist Outpatient Services virtual care evaluation.