Rapid Research Responses to COVID-19 - Deadline: 06.05.2021 (Closed)

 

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes: - comprehensive catalogue of research infrastructure services relevant to tackle infectious diseases epidemics is available, including services supporting pertinent social sciences research. - fast assembly and provision of innovative, customized and efficient research infrastructure services to support research linked to detecting, assessing and combating newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. - challenge driven integration of research infrastructures to better support research addressing infectious diseases and face epidemics, including for use by epidemics risk assessment and risk management bodies (such as the European Center for Disease prevention and Control (ECDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Organization of Animal Health (OIE) and national epidemics management bodies). - rapid response to epidemics outbreaks through research infrastructure services underpinning and supporting research aiming to understand causes and development of the epidemic. - development of novel/adapted epidemics intervention tools and measures enabled by relevant research infrastructure (RI) services. - availability of research data emerging from access provision activities for re-use on common data platforms and registries, according to FAIR principles and compliant with legal provisions under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

 

Proposals under this action, will integrate research infrastructure services to form a comprehensive and inclusive portfolio to support research in response to infectious disease epidemics or underpinning respective forefront research in the field. As a first immediate challenge, the delivered services should support research targeting newly emerging SARS-Cov-2 variants and addressing the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Proposals will support the provision of trans-national and/or virtual access to researchers as well as training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customize and integrate the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services. Access to research infrastructure services will be provided to users to support their research projects targeting the development of new or adapted prevention and/or intervention tools and measures, such as new or adapted diagnostic procedures and therapies, drugs, vaccines, clinical disease management or disease vector control, or evidence-based public health, socio-behavioural and socio-economic measures. Priority should be given to supporting research projects targeting newly emerging virus variants, focusing on their detection, characterisation, surveillance and assessment (changes in transmissibility and disease manifestation) and on the adaptation of intervention and prevention measures (medication, vaccines, public health measures) which likely also requires additional regulatory and clinical trials support. Following the One-Health concept, services supporting research on transmission of pathogens from animals to humans (or vice versa animals as host reservoir), including vector-borne transmission, should be covered. Research infrastructures dealing with social science should be involved to enable data acquisition enhancing understanding of individual and population perceptions and behaviours in an epidemic setting, including public response to intervention measures such as social distancing, vaccine campaigns, etc., over the course of an epidemic. Flexibility in the provision of services should be properly demonstrated to ensure fast re-orientation and expansion of the portfolio in response to unexpected epidemics situations, including emerging threats posed by new SARS-CoV-2 variants. Effective operational links to epidemics risk assessment and management bodies like ECDC, WHO, OIE, a possible future EU Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (EU-HERA) and national authorities are essential. Global standards, relevant data platforms and registries should be used to make user project results openly available and usable, thus enabling further research on pathogens, disease manifestation, behavioural research and other epidemics related social science research. Appropriate links should be ensured with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the European COVID-19 Data Platform and the newly established Population Health Information Research Infrastructure for COVID-19 (PHIRI). Data management (and related ethics issues) and interoperability should be addressed. To identify and better exploit related synergies, share results and avoid overlaps, grants awarded under this action should cooperate with those awarded under the Other action “FAIR and open data sharing in support of European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases”. To this extent, proposals should provide for dedicated activities and earmark appropriate resources.

 

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