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The NIH is deeply concerned for the health and safety of people involved in NIH research, and about the effects on the biomedical enterprise in the areas affected by the HHS declared public health emergency for COVID-19. This is a rapidly evolving situation, and we are aware that many institutions are taking a variety of “social distancing” measures, including switching to telework and cancelling or postponing classes and non-essential meetings.
Due to the potential exceptional impact of the declared public health emergency, we want to assure our recipient community that NIH will be doing our part to help you continue your research. Our website on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Information for NIH Applicants and Recipients has a list of available resources. The resources include links to NIH Guide Notices and FAQs as well as information provided by the CDC and the WHO. Among the CDC links are advice for institutions of higher education and advice for mental health and coping.
Please visit our website often as we anticipate updates.
Most important of all please take care – we wish you, your colleagues, and your families all the best as we deal with the current challenges.
VIDEO: Message to Applicants and Recipients of NIH Funds on Flexibilities Needed for COVID-19 Public Health Emergency
Mike, Our Vice Chancellor for Research at Univ. California Irvine just sent an email about “Research Ramp-down & Curtailment” because of COVID-19 which will begin this Friday and last for a month. Most PIs have major concerns about how this will impact their grants, progress reports, etc. But there is also concern that without NIH approval, how can they justify paying some personnel off of grants during this period and also not be making adequate progress. NIH needs to give all PIs guidance and assurances that letting people stay home for some period will not adversely affect on-going funding (i.e, publications, and progress reports may be delayed due to less essential personnel being able to do the work, etc).
Have you seen our FAQ on this topic? It may be helpful. https://grants.nih.gov/faqs#/covid-19.htm?anchor=question55769
We are continually adding to these FAQs as questions arise that we have answers for. https://grants.nih.gov/faqs#/covid-19.htm
Rather than shuttering biomedical labs at universities across US, I feel that we need to have more of a coordinated and larger effort by our bioscience community to combat sars-cov-2. 6-10 labs at every university should be identified, and given full resources through emergency seed grant funding, and through prioritized and expedited core resources (screening centers, sequencing centers, pathology cores). Other non-essential labs (stem cell, immunology, aging, cancer, neural) can contribute to these virology labs’ research by donating equipment, supplies, lab space, and 1-2 of their best senior scientists who can run gels, ELISAs, western blots, PCRs, and other non-BLS3 level research so that specialized virology labs have unfettered access to increase basic and translational sars-cov-2 research efficiency.
I believe sending academic scientists home for social distancing is the wrong approach, and will be ineffective as others in the community will be less compliant with these rules and continue to spread the pandemic while abled-bodied scientists remain at home. This will result in the national guard coming to enforce social distancing. We are in war against a virus and the best brains need to be in the fight. Our best chance at stopping this pandemic is through a massive influx of the best scientists from all fields serving as facilitators for the virology labs.
Also I would like to volunteer at NIH in any way possible (I am a highly trained senior postdoc starting a faculty position in August), and am here to move science forward.
I believe sending scientists home for social distancing is the wrong approach, and will be ineffective, as others in the community will be less compliant with these rules and continue to spread the pandemic while abled-bodied scientists sit at home. Our best chance at stopping this pandemic is through a massive influx of the best scientists from all fields serving as facilitators for the virology labs.
Also I would like to volunteer through NIH in anyway possible. I am a highly-trained senior postdoc, and am here to facilitate or help in any way.