The COVID-19 pandemic has had an irrevocable impact on healthcare both in the UK and worldwide. To date, almost 20 million cases had been recorded in the England and 164,000 deaths[1]. As we make advances in understanding how we manage this disease clinically, it is also important that we use this time to better understand who is more susceptible to COVID infection and why. Understanding the impact of religion and spiritual beliefs/behaviours (RSBB) is a novel assessment of factors that may influence COVID-19 transmission and therefore incidence. In this study we will determine whether (and how) behaviours associated with religion or spiritual beliefs such as attending a place of worship, attending a faith school or belief in a divine power has any impact on COVID incidence in our cohort. Our analysis will be conducted using data collected before and after covid from mothers and partners from the ALSPAC cohort and classes of religiosity determined by latent class analysis on the same population (highly religious, moderately religious, agnostic, and atheist)[2]. These four groups have been determined using a range of religious belief indicators and socioeconomic risk factors. By conducting this analysis, we hope to contribute to the emerging description of COVID populations alongside other known risk factors such as social deprivation and co-morbidity.

[1]coronavirus.data.gov.uk.(n.d.).Official UK Coronavirus Dashboard. [online]Available at: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths?areaType=nation&areaName=....
[2]Halstead I, Heron J and Joinson C. Identifying patterns of religiosity in adults from a large UK cohort using latent class analysis[version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review].Wellcome Open Res 2022, 7:192(https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.17969.1)