As universities respond to Covid-19, the new normal needs new thinking
From offering up testing facilities, to engineering ventilators, to releasing medical staff to the National Health Service, universities are helping fight the coronavirus pandemic. And the scale of the response deserves gratitude and praise. Our cover story, and feature on P10-11, highlight just some of the initiatives underway.
But while the number of cases continues to grow, the wider situation is shifting from one of daily adjustment to a new normal—for however long that will be. The government’s regular announcement of new measures, and the need for organisations and individuals to immediately respond—has been replaced by a focus on grappling to ensure the success of steps already in place. With a lockdown in force attention has shifted to the UK’s lag in testing capacity and creating the number of ventilators and hospital beds the NHS will need in the weeks to come. Alongside delivering a vaccine.
For universities, the parameters that will shape their world during this phase of the crisis are now in place: teaching is online, researchers without an immediate need to access facilities will be working from home. Longer term, there will be more huge adjustments, as the impact on student recruitment for September and beyond becomes clear. But for now, it is worth institutions and funders casting an eye over the way things are working, and perhaps refining a few measures that—laudably and out of necessity—have been brought forward at speed.
One is the way that rapid-response funding is being allocated. On the one hand, researchers have reported frustration at bureaucracy slowing down access to funding for Covid 19-related work; a non-bureaucratic exercise to speed things up would be welcomed. On the other, while researchers are trying to pull in the same direction and share insights, some have expressed concern that urgency has meant most funding being funnelled to the ‘usual suspects’. They have called for initiatives that help widen the pool of expertise.
This is, too, a moment to ensure that disciplines outside of biomedicine are not forgotten in the search for answers to the pandemic. While medical intervention is the clear frontline, other disciplines could offer vital insight into how best to deliver a social response, from approaches to the lifting of restrictions, to ethical questions around the trial and deployment of potential vaccines.
On an individual level, many researchers on non-Covid projects are now troubled by their own financial security, unsure whether grants will be extended to cover downtime while they cannot access facilities.
No one would have expected funders—grappling with huge adjustments themselves—to have had answers to these questions immediately, but with the shape of the next few weeks and months becoming clearer, now is the time to address them.
There are signs of changes to ways of doing things that will be of lasting benefit the other side of the pandemic; but first, the research community, like wider society, needs to emerge in as good a shape as possible.
This article also appeared in Research Fortnight