Author: esther.kok

The impacts of healthcare professionals being research participants are often neglected. As professionals, they tend to be perceived as ‘immune’ to many negative effects of sharing their experiences. However, in the context of an ongoing global pandemic such as COVID-19, these assumptions can be clearly challenged. In March 2022, the RECOVER Social Science team, together with other collaborators, published a new article that draws on their experiences of conducting single and longitudinal qualitative interviews with Health Care Professionals (HCP) in primary, secondary and tertiary settings during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe during 2020.

On the 1st of January 2022, the Ecraid foundation was formerly launched. Ecraid advances clinical research in the field of infectious disease with the development of a pan-European clinical research network. It is the first network of its kind in Europe. MERMAIDS, SOS-COVID and REMAP-CAP, the clinical studies that have been included as part of the HORIZON2020 funded RECOVER project on COVID-19 are embedded into Ecraid.

At the beginning of 2022, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has not stopped yet. Despite high vaccination coverage, the number of positive cases has reached a record level. In addition, a new SARS-CoV-2 variant has emerged (Omicron variant) with a higher infection rate compared to previous variants. Both of these aspects may have a significant effect on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within households. However, the extent of that effect has not yet been quantified. Therefore, a new study to analyse the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infections within households was launched in January 2022.

Professor Herman Goossens (University of Antwerp and University Hospital of Antwerp), in collaboration with his colleagues Marc Bonten and Lennie Derde of the University Medical Centre Utrecht, and Peter Horby of the University of Oxford, casts a critical eye on how the clinical research community reacted to the pandemic in Europe in a new publication in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

RECOVER is one of the 18 projects that the European Union has founded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It brings together leading scientists and research institutions to obtain crucial unknown information about the disease through clinical research in order to help the EU fight the virus and save patients’ lives. Now, it is time to look back on the first period of RECOVER and what we have achieved so far.

In order to tackle the pandemic, governments established various types of advisory boards to provide evidence and recommendations to policy makers. Scientists working on these boards have faced many challenges, including working under significant time constraints to produce ‘evidence’ as quickly as possible. However, their voices are still largely missing in the scientific literature. In a recent qualitative study, the RECOVER social science team explores the views and experiences of scientists working on government advisory boards during the COVID- 19 pandemic, with the aim to learn lessons for future pandemic management and preparedness.

A new RECOVER study developed a modelling framework to help policymakers assess the use of lockdown as a last resort option, by determining when a lockdown should be adopted to avoid passing a predetermined ICU capacity target and by evaluating situations where a slowly growing epidemic might remain manageable for the healthcare system without the need for a lockdown.

For patients with COVID-19 who are receiving organ support in an ICU, antiplatelet therapy, either with aspirin or P2Y12 inhibitor (which were found to be equivalent), was ineffective at improving the composite endpoint of death and organ support free days when compared to no antiplatelet therapy

In May 2021, the RECOVER Social Science team has published a new study in British Journal of General Practice exploring the experiences of primary care healthcare professionals’ (PCPs) during the first peak of COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted in eight European countries: England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Greece, and Sweden, and shows the transformation of primary care during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Adaptive Platform Trial for Community-Acquired Pneumonia, REMAP-CAP, launched its third video. The video shows the global and diverse of REMAP-CAP.