Rapid establishment of a COVID-19 biobank in NHRI by National Biobank Consortium of Taiwan

By the request of the Minister of Health and Welfare, NHRI Biobank was assigned to establish a COVID-19 biobank in early Feb, 2020 to collect COVID-19 patients' blood samples for Taiwan researchers and industries in an emergent way. It was set up in less than 3 weeks and quickly opened for application. This biobank can provide applicants with biosamples, such as serum, DNA and RNA, and also the clinical and genomic data, so as to accelerate the COVID-19 treatment and prevention research in Taiwan. This COID-19 biobank already received 7 applications. It has become a very important research resource for the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan, including disease mechanism, the variable human responses and epidemic preventions.