UKRI delays were ‘major challenge’ for Covid researchers

But UKRI-funded awards were also “critical” to global efforts to tackle Covid, finds report

Scientists working to tackle the spread of Covid during the pandemic with awards from national funder UK Research and Innovation found delays from the organisation to be a “major challenge” for their research, a new report has found.

As the pandemic took hold in early 2020, UKRI developed a Covid-19 response strategy to fund research on the disease and its wider implications. The funder has now commissioned a report to assess the impact of its R&D funding response to Covid-19.