24 Feb World experts and funders set priorities for COVID-19 research
Leading health experts from around the world met recently at the World Health Organization’s Geneva headquarters for a 2-day forum to assess the current level of knowledge about the new COVID-19 disease, identify gaps and work together to accelerate and fund priority research needed to help stop this outbreak and prepare for any future outbreaks.
Major research funders and over 300 scientists and researchers discussed all aspects of the outbreak and ways to control it including:
- the natural history of the virus, its transmission and diagnosis
- animal and environmental research on the origin of the virus, including management measures at the human-animal interface
- epidemiological studies
- clinical characterization and management of disease caused by the virus
- infection prevention and control, including best ways to protect health care workers
- research and development for candidate therapeutics and vaccines
- ethical considerations for research
- integration of social sciences into the outbreak response
The meeting was hosted by WHO in collaboration with GloPID-R (the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness).
The deliberations will form the basis of a research and innovation roadmap charting all the research needed and this will be used by researchers and funders to accelerate the research response.
For further information see the full article posted by WHO:
WHO COVID-19 Database
WHO is also gathering the latest scientific findings and knowledge on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and compiling it in a database. It is updated daily from searchers of bibliographic databases, hand searches of the table of contents of relevant journals, and the addition of other relevant scientific articles. You can search the WHO database of publications on coronavirus disease here: