The main research areas for 2022 will focus on the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, secondary diseases after COVID-19 and deaths after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. The scientific goals of NATON are to continue to support COVID-19 research in line with the overall NUM focus.
Particularly, NATON will tackle the following topics:
- the pathophysiological role of pathogenic SARS-CoV-2 variants
- consequences of COVID-19 (i.e. “Long COVID”)
- the vaccine-associated conditions, particularly side effects (e.g. VITT), break-through infections, and vaccine-failures
Addressing these research areas will be done by all autopsy centers, which will perform autopsies of such cases, generate biomaterial in the frame of the decentralized biobanking concept of NATON and centrally report all cases to DeRegCOVID.
