Standing on Shoulders of ‘Scientific Forbears,’ NIH, Research Community Rose to COVID-19 Challenges

“Perhaps the most valuable lesson that COVID-19 has taught the research community—and hopefully society more broadly—is the importance of collective effort and continuous investment in basic and applied research.”

So wrote nearly three dozen authors, led by former NIH Director Francis Collins, reflecting on lessons learned during the COVID-19 public health emergency.[1] NIH responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by investing in vaccine development and evaluation, prioritizing diversity in clinical trials, focusing on therapeutic trials and streamlining development of diagnostic tests, efforts that were largely successful. Yet the experiences also showed the need for improvements to address future crises, they wrote in a recent paper published in Science.

“It takes more than individual ingenuity and hard work for biomedical research to respond swiftly and effectively to a rapidly emerging public health challenge. This pandemic required the coordinated efforts of thousands of creative researchers, administrators, and community partners who were supported by much needed resources and provided with rapid, free access to decades of discoveries made by their scientific forebears,” the authors pointed out.

To date, 6.5 million individuals worldwide have died in the pandemic, including more than 1.1 million in the United States, and it isn’t over yet. But “it is not too soon to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the research response and some of the lessons that can be learned,” the article said.

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