Bern, Get Ready (BEready) Cohort Study for Pandemic Preparedness

The overall aim is to establish BEready as a 'pandemic preparedness cohort', a cohort with a well-characterised study population of households, which has an infrastructure to conduct studies about infectious diseases, and which can be rapidly mobilised to respond to a new pandemic. BEready aims to understand the epidemiology and transmission of infectious diseases (particularly viral respiratory pathogens) in households including pets in the canton of Bern, and to engage diverse communities in efforts to strengthen pandemic preparedness. The objectives are: * to study the distribution and timing of infectious diseases and transmission patterns of circulating infectious diseases, both between individuals and at the human-animal interface (One Health) * to study social (e.g. gender, affective polarisation) and environmental factors (e.g. climate change), which may affect transmission or acquisition of infectious diseases; * to understand how households, including their pets, in the canton of Bern have been and will be affected by COVID-19; and * to engage diverse communities in ongoing efforts to strengthen pandemic and public health literacy, and to prepare for the public health response to a new pandemic.