Image Source: The Financial Express

Agencies:

This Thursday it will be six months since WHO declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International concern.

Latest press briefing WHO Director General Dr. Tedros reiterated the basic measures that are needed to suppress transmission and save lives -- to find, isolate, test and care for cases, trace and quarantine their contacts. �Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they�re not, cases go up�.

The first forum in February brought together over 350 scientists and public health experts from around the world to define the research priorities for COVID-19. A coordinated Global Research Roadmap was developed ,using the WHO R&D Blueprint framework and based on the deliberations from the Forum.

Second Global Research Forum 1-2 July 2020
The second Global Research and Innovation Forum was held virually, allowing 1,200 participants from nearly 100 countries, representing all six WHO regions. An important element of this second Forum was to sustain the momentum generated during the February meeting within the global scientific community, and to ensure regional and country office counterparts have theopportunity to engage and be updated on research progress for COVID-19.

Specifically, the forum reviewed the accumulated scientific knowledge around the following areas:
o Clinical characterization and the effect of support therapies in survival
o Transmission, severity, susceptibility, and control and mitigation measures
o Zoonotic sources and new animal reservoir with ability to transmit to humans
o Viral shedding and transmission dynamics
o Protecting health care workers and the public from the virus during the pandemic
o Re-purposing existing drugs to treat severe hospitalized cases of COVID-19
o The social sciences of COVID-19 including the effects on mental health