LIVE BLOG: R&D response to COVID-19 pandemic (Archived)

22 Oct 2020 | Live Blog

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COVID

 

 

ETH Zurich is reducing activities which require physical presence to “an absolute minimum”, said ETH President Joël Mesot. The Swiss university will switch to emergency operation, maintaining only essential activities on campus. All research not related to COVID-19 will be cut back.

 

The UK Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN), a government-funded body that promotes links between universities and companies, is calling on businesses, data scientists and biomedical researchers in the UK and beyond to participate in the hackathon, “CoronaHack – AI vs. Covid-19”, to share ideas on how to apply artificial intelligence to control and manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is an urgent demand for technologies, ranging from providing intensive care and rapid training and education of healthcare personnel, to supporting people who are self-isolating or working from home. The KTN says addressing these needs requires multi-disciplinary collaborations, with artificial intelligence (AI) being one part of the answer.

 

The UK government announced it is to invest £20 million in the Covid-19 genomics consortium, a new genome sequencing initiative to track the evolution of the virus by sequencing multiple samples from patients with confirmed COVID-19 infections.  The aim is to better understand the spread of the coronavirus and how it is mutating over time.

There is already a global effort to track how the virus is changing as it passes from one human host to another on nextstrain.org, which has been collecting viral genome sequences since 20 January. It now has 885 sequences from around the world, including 89 from the UK.

 

A new project has been launched online, sharing data and studies about how the coronavirus is putting pressure on European healthcare systems.

Comparing the number of deaths and active cases in Italy as of 11 March, the contributors have estimated how an Italian scenario would put pressure on a variety of European healthcare systems. Using the Eurostat database, key factors were considered, such as the number of hospital beds and doctors, as well as healthcare expenditure, for each European country.  

The study is funded through the European Commission’s Epipose project, which aims to provide evidence to back the clinical and public health response to the epidemic.

 

A team of engineers at Vrije Universiteit Brussel’s FabLab Brussels have started building and testing an artificial ventilator for critical COVID-19 patients. They started from a design by MIT, extended with sensors based on specifications from researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the UZ Brussel. Large-scale production is still premature. Researchers will establish in the coming days and weeks whether the devices can actually be used in hospitals.

 

Raquel Yotti, director of the Carlos III Public Health Institute, confirmed during the press conference of the Government's Coronavirus Technical Management Committee that the government plans to acquire four robots which could bring the daily number of tests to 80,000 (compared to 15,000-20,000 a day at the moment).

 

GeNeuro, a company focused on neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, announced it is postponing a phase II trial of its treatment for multiple sclerosis. The trial, due to be held at the Karolinska Institutet, will be delayed to allow the hospital to prioritise its resources for COVID-19 patients, and to assure the safety of multiple sclerosis patients.

 

EuroScience has postponed its biennial EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) from 5 July to 2 September due to the coronavirus crisis. The organiser said the conference will take place, as planned, in Trieste, Italy. By September, EuroScience will make teleconferencing available and amplify sessions about public health and environment topics. ESOF is an interdisciplinary meeting on Science and Innovation in Europe, bringing together scientists to think about their practices and roles in society.

 

The two Antarctic bases Juan Carlos I and Gabriel de Castilla have been closed a week ahead of schedule because of the coronavirus outbreak. The research vessel Hespérides, in charge of mapping oceanic activity, will try to disembark its 37 civilian and military passengers in Brazil, to fly back to Spain. The Spanish Antarctic campaign, financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, is comprised of 13 scientific projects, promoting cooperation between public and private institutions of R&D.

 

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), relying on expert group guidance, has been giving advice to the UK government on how to handle the coronavirus crisis. The joint statements and evidence cover a wide scope of research fields, such as behavioural science, social interventions, impact of self-isolation and insights on mass gatherings. Imperial College London also contributed to the advice, with reports about transmissibility and severity of COVID-19.

 

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