When Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) spread across the world in 2020, it had major and long-lasting effects. Globally, the virus caused an estimated 20 million deaths, cost $16 trillion USD, and pushed 130 million people into poverty. Many research and healthcare systems struggled to respond quickly, which led to critical delays, wasted resources, and unnecessary harm. In Canada, research progress was slowed because provinces could not easily combine important information like vaccination records, test results, and viral strain data. This made it harder to understand what was happening in real time and to evaluate how well different treatments across pre-hospital, emergency department, and hospital settings were working, as well as the broader impacts of pandemic policies on health equity. For many Canadians, urgently needed research came too late. To respond to these challenges, emergency doctors across Canada created a Canada-wide secure research database of hospital visit information for patients tested for SARS-CoV-2 called the Canadian COVID-19 Emergency Department Rapid Response Network (CCEDRRN). This network built a [...]