Estimates of protection levels against SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe COVID-19 in Germany before the 2022/2023 winter season: the IMMUNEBRIDGE project.

"Declarations Conflict of interestCK serves as a medical advisor to Centogene and Retromer Therapeutics and has received speaking honoraria from Desitin and Bial. Ethical approvalThe responsible ethics committees of individual studies approved all study-related analyses: GUIDE: 202/22 approved by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelm-University Bonn. ELISA: University of Lübeck (Az. 20–150). NAKO: The study is continuously approved by the responsible local ethics committees of the German Federal States where all study centers are located in (original ethics approvals of the leading ethics committee of the Bayerische Landesärztekammer (protocol code 13023, Approval Date: 27 March 2013 and 14 February 2014 (rectification of documents, study protocol, consent form)). An external ethics advisory board has been established that accompanies NAKO over the full study period. A 'Code of Ethics' of NAKO (Ethikkodex) has been developed and the study is under steady surveillance by the ethics committees of the regional study centers [8]. STAAB: Ethics committee of the Medical Faculty of the University Würzburg (STAAB: #98/13). MuSPAD: Ethics committee of Hannover Medical School (9086_BO_S_2020 for MuSPAD), Dresden paedSAXCOVID: Ethics Committee of the Technische University (TU) Dresden (BO-EK-156042020). Bochum CorKID: Ethics Committee of the Ruhr University Bochum (Nr. 20-6927_7). Würzburg Wü-KITa-CoV: Würzburg, Kennzeichen 105/21. IMMUNEBRIDGE_ED: Ethics Committee of University Medical Center Göttingen (21/6/22). Availability of data and materialsThe aggregated data for this study will be made available to other academic researchers. The minimum dataset includes study site information, assay information, sample type, demographic information, self-administered diagnostic anamneses and lab results (NC, S Spike, IGRA and NAb). Institutions can apply for the data via serohub@helmholtz-hzi.de. Data were provided to the modelling network for severe infectious diseases in Germany (MONID [13]). Conflict of interest CK serves as a medical advisor to Centogene and Retromer Therapeutics and has received speaking honoraria from Desitin and Bial."

"Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. IMMUNEBRIDGE is a research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the Network University Medicine (NUM) (FKZ 01KX1021). The central laboratory analysis in Oldenburg and Greifswald for the population-based cohort studies was financed via the IMMUNEBRIDGE project. Online Resource 1 Table S1 gives an overview of the basic funding for data collection for each study. The IMMUNEBRIDGE_ED study was conducted with a hospital-based approach at the Central Emergency Department of the University Medical Center Göttingen and funded by intramural funds. This project was conducted with data from the German National Cohort (NAKO) (www.nako.de). The NAKO is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) [project funding reference numbers: 01ER1301A/B/C, 01ER1511D and 01ER1801A/B/C/D], federal states of Germany and the Helmholtz Association, the participating universities and the institutes of the Leibniz Association. The STAAB study received funding by the BMBF (01EO1004 and 01EO1504); the STAAB COVID program was funded by the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art (Aktenzeichen U.7-H4001.1.7/24/2). This work was performed as part of the project ‘Integrated Early Warning System for Local Recognition, Prevention, and Control for Epidemic Outbreaks’ (LOKI), which is funded by the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association (grant agreement number KA1-Co-08). It was further supported by the  Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) via the RESPINOW (grant number: MV2021-012) and OptimAgent (grant number: MV2021-014) projects."