The European Union (EU) has announced support to 18 projects with a total of €48.5 million from Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation programme, as part of its emergency call for urgently needed research and innovation into the coronavirus. The projects, involving over 140 research teams, focus on four priorities: on protective equipment, improving modelling of the spread of the virus, rapid diagnostics techniques, as well as treatments-vaccines.

Scientific organisations in ASEAN Member States are invited to express their interest to cooperate with the newly launched projects (see details below). Priority will be given to activities related to modelling and High Performance Computing (HPC) as well as infrastructure platforms and projects.

Since the outset of the COVID19 pandemic, the EU has been active in support of research and collaboration both within the EU and worldwide. The EU has already mobilised public and private funding of up to €90 million through the Innovative Medicines Initiative, and offered up to €80 million of financial support to the innovative company CureVac to scale up development and production of a vaccine against the Coronavirus. Other additional initiatives are being designed and planned.

BACKGROUND

The European Commission – the EU’s executive body – has been at the forefront of supporting research and innovation and coordinating European and global research efforts, including on pandemic preparedness. In addition to the new actions launched by the European Commission in 2020, a number of past and ongoing research actions are already contributing to preparedness and response to the COVID19 outbreak, for example:

• The European Virus Archive - GLOBAL (EVAg) has already responded to some 200 requests from 55 countries to provide access to products needed for diagnosing coronavirus infection;
• The PREPARE project, a wide network that supports the readiness of hospitals in Europe and helps better understand the dynamics of the outbreak;
• The European Commission is also working with other research funders through the “Global research collaboration for infectious disease preparedness” (GloPID-R) network, which coordinates research response and addresses priority research needs (www.glopid-r.org (link is external))

Websites:

List of 18 new research projects on coronavirus

https://ec.europa.eu/info/files/new-research-actions-coronavirus_en

https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/research_and_innovation/research_by_area/documents/ec_rtd_cv-projects.pdf
 

For expression of interest to cooperate with the newly launched projects, e-mail: RTD-CORONAVIRUS@ec.europa.eu (link sends e-mail)

Source: Mission of the European Union to ASEAN