Question

Discuss 2 different behavioral examples regarding corona virus. What happened, and what was the outcome?

provide at least one research-based recommendation about corona virus. These recommendations need to be behavioral, actionable suggestions. In other words, the team should know exactly what to do next week in order to improve. These should be specific to this team, taking into account everything you know about them. Furthermore, please use support from research to discuss why and how these recommendations would improve the team. Finally, discuss the risks and limitations for your recommendations

Answer 1

Over the first 6 weeks of the new decade, the novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, has spread from the People’s Republic of China to 20 other countries. On 30 January 2020 following the recommendations of the Emergency Committee, the WHO Director General declared that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

In view of the urgency of this outbreak, the international community is mobilising to find ways to significantly accelerate the development of interventions. There is a global strategy and preparedness plan that allows the rapid activation of R&D activities during epidemics. Its aim is to fast-track the availability of effective tests, vaccines and medicines that can be used to save lives and avert large scale crisis. There are research actions were agreed as part of this outbreak

1. Virus: natural history, transmission and diagnostics

• Understand the natural history of the virus and shedding of it from an infected person

• Support implementation of diagnostics and products to improve clinical processes

• Develop disease models, including animal models for infection, disease and transmission

• Develop tools and studies to monitor phenotypic change and potential adaptation of the virus

• Better understand the immune response and immunity

2. Animal and environmental research on the virus origin, and management measures at the human-animal interface

• Identify animal host(s) and any evidence of continued spill-over to humans

• Understand the socioeconomic and behavioural risk factors for this spill-over

• Design and test sustainable risk reduction strategies

3. Epidemiological studies

• Understand the transmission dynamics of the virus, including the basic reproductive number, incubation period, serial interval, modes of transmission and environmental factors

• Define the severity of disease, including risk of fatality among symptomatic hospitalized patients, and high-risk patient groups

• Understand susceptibility of populations

• Identify what public health mitigation measures could be effective for control

4. Clinical characterisation and management

• Define the natural history of disease to inform clinical care, public health interventions, infection prevention control, transmission, and clinical trials

• Develop a core clinical outcome set to maximize usability of data across a range of trials

• Determine adjunctive and supportive interventions that can improve the clinical outcomes of infected patients (e.g. steroids, high flow oxygen)

5. Infection prevention and control, including health care workers’ protection

• Understand effectiveness of movement control strategies to prevent secondary transmission in health care and community settings

• Optimise the effectiveness of personal protective equipment (PPE) and its usefulness to reduce risk of transmission in health care and community settings • Minimise the role of the environment in transmission

6. Candidate therapeutics R&D

• Develop animal models and standardise challenge studies

• Develop prophylaxis clinical studies and prioritise in healthcare workers

Ensure adequate supply of investigational? therapeutics showing efficacy (address? cost/affordability, equitable access, production capacity and technology transfer

         

7. Candidate vaccines R&D

• Optimize clinical trial design, including for Phase III/ prioritized candidates for testing

• Understand approaches to evaluate risk for enhanced disease after vaccination

• Develop assays to evaluate vaccine immune response and process development for vaccines, alongside suitable animal models [in conjunction with therapeutics]

8. Ethical considerations for research

• Articulate and translate existing ethical principles and standards to salient issues in COVID-2019

• Embed ethics across all thematic areas, engage with novel ethical issues that arise and coordinate to minimise duplication of oversight

• Support sustained education, access, and capacity building in the area of ethics

9. Social sciences in the outbreak response

• Establish a team at WHO that will be integrated within multidisciplinary research and operational platforms and that will connect with existing and expanded global networks of social sciences.

• Develop qualitative assessment frameworks to systematically collect information related to local barriers and enablers for the uptake and adherence to public health measures for prevention and control. This includes the rapid identification of the secondary impacts of these measures. (e.g. use of surgical masks, modification of health seeking behaviours for SRH, school closures)

• Identify how the burden of responding to the outbreak and implementing public health measures affects the physical and psychological health of those providing care for Covid-19 patients and identify the immediate needs that must be addressed.

• Identify the underlying drivers of fear, anxiety and stigma that fuel misinformation and rumour, particularly through social media.

• Contextually contribute to the design of research to ensure the involvement of communities throughout the process (in design, implementation and evaluation).

In addition to the research actions ongoing, the Forum participants committed to a comprehensive collaborative research agenda. The implementation of this collaborative research agenda started immediately. We now have a clear roadmap with immediate and mid and longer-term priorities to build a robust global research response. Importantly there is a decisive pledge to collaboration, solidarity and to equitable access to all innovations developed.