The Lifelines COVID-19 Cohort: a questionnaire-based study to investigate COVID-19 infection and its health and societal impacts in a Dutch population-based cohort

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected billions of people around the world not only through the infection itself but also through its wider impact on public health and daily life. To assess the effects of the pandemic, a team of researchers across a wide range of disciplines developed and implemented the Lifelines COVID-19 questionnaire, leading to the development of the Lifelines COVID-19 cohort. This cohort is recruited from participants of the Lifelines prospective population cohort and the Lifelines NEXT birth cohort, and participants were asked to fill out detailed questionnaires about their physical and mental health and experiences on a weekly basis starting in late March of 2020 and on a bi-weekly basis staring in June 2020. The Lifelines region covers the three Northern provinces of the Netherlands— Drenthe, Groningen and Friesland—which together account for ∼10% of the Dutch population. To date, >70,000 people have responded to the questionnaires at least once, and the questionnaire program is still ongoing. Data collected by the questionnaires will be used to address four aspects of the outbreak: (1) how the COVID-19 pandemic developed in the three northern provinces of the Netherlands, (2) which environmental risk factors predict disease susceptibility and severity, (3) which genetic risk factors predict disease susceptibility and severity and (4) what are the psychological and societal impacts of the crisis. Informed consent All Lifelines and Lifelines NEXT participants have provided informed consent that provide the opportunity for add-on research. Research involving human participants Both the Lifelines and the Lifelines NEXT studies were approved by the ethics committee of the University Medical Center Groningen.