WHO Global Research and Innovation Forum on COVID-19

Prof Emily Chan, Mr C S Wong and Mr Zhe Huang of CCOUC team have been invited by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R) to join a 2-day WHO virtual meeting of the Global Research and Innovation Forum on COVID-19 during 1-2 July 2020 via Zoom. With more than 1,200 key experts, partners and stakeholders participating, this meeting is a follow-up to the one held in February 2020, of which the global research roadmap for COVID-19 was formulated. On the second day of the meeting, Prof Emily Chan delivered a presentation entitled “Next steps and new frontiers: Emerging social sciences research priorities”, in which she presented the social science research priorities in providing evidence to inform policy and practices, sharing of localised adaptations that work and the role of communities in response and mitigation, addressing uneven impact of COVID-19 on different social groups, as well as methodological innovations and community of practice. She also highlighted the importance of research collaboration.

The first day of this meeting centred on reviewing critical research findings and their impacts on the response to COVID-19 as well as the progress with the implementation of the global research roadmap. A review of the latest COVID-19 treatments was also conducted. Topics covered included:

Clinical characterization and management: a pathway to improve clinical care for COVID-19
Understanding COVID-19 epidemiology
Animal and environmental research on the virus origin, and management measures at the human-animal interface
Virus: natural history, transmission and diagnostics
What have we learned about protecting HCWs and the public?
Ethics and COVID-19 - Beyond the rhetoric
What have we learned in social sciences in COVID-19?
Accelerating candidate vaccines evaluation
Candidate therapeutics: how to continue to develop robust evidence to inform standard of care?
COVID treatment in hospital: what the randomised evidence has taught us
How to maximize the impact of ongoing initiatives and improve global collaboration?

During the second day, emerging research questions, science gaps and new research priorities concerning the roadmap were highlighted. Panel members also discussed the most up-to-date developments of COVID-19 vaccines. The following topics were covered:

Advancing standards of care for COVID-19: Pathway to improve clinical care
Critical research questions in epidemiology: How epidemiological studies can further contribute to outbreak control?
Animal and environmental research on the virus origin, and management measures at the human-animal interface- what is next?
Research gaps and emerging priorities for diagnostics
Discussion on emerging research priorities
Moving the research agenda forward: emerging priorities for Infection prevention & control
Ethics: preparedness for the second wave and beyond
Next steps and new frontiers: Emerging social sciences research priorities
Tailoring selection and evaluation of therapeutics to increased understanding of the disease
Ensuring most candidate vaccines are adequately evaluated until they fail
Discussion on emerging research priorities
COVID vaccines: Are speed and rigour compatible propositions? How can both speed and rigour be achieved?
Advancing research and access to COVID vaccines: How to maximize the impact of ongoing initiatives and improve global collaboration?

The global research roadmap was developed by the WHO and GloPID-R together with scientists, researchers, national public health experts and major research funders around the globe to facilitate the conduct of research, product development and innovation tackling COVID-19. The two main aims of the roadmap are:

to ensure that those affected by COVID-19 are promptly diagnosed and receive optimal care; while integrating innovation fully within each research thematic area and
to support research priorities in a way that leads to the development of global research platform(s) pre-prepared for the next disease X epidemic; thus, allowing for accelerated research, research and development (R&D) for diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines and their timely access.