The European Commission has launched a manifesto to maximise the accessibility of research results in the fight against COVID-19. It provides guiding principles for beneficiaries of EU research grants for coronavirus prevention, testing, treatment and vaccination to ensure that their research results will be accessible for all and guarantee a return on public investment.

RECOVER Consortium Member, Dr. Christian Drosten, was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz) for his contribution to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Federal Cross of Merit is the highest federal decoration of Germany, awarded by the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

On 19 August 2020 the Social Sciences team of RECOVER co-authored an article in the BMJ arguing that face coverings should be considered a social practice rather than medical equipment.

The French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and Sociology and Economics of Networks and Services lab at Orange Experience Design Lab published a RECOVER co-funded paper on the impact of lockdown on COVID-19 epidemic in Île-de-France and possible exit strategies.

In the early months of 2020, a novel COVID-19 spread rapidly from China across multiple countries worldwide. As of March 17, 2020, COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. We collected data on COVID-19 cases outside China during the early phase of the pandemic and used them to predict trends in importations and quantify the proportion of undetected imported cases.

RECOVER project team published an article in Eurosurveilance presenting results of a first external quality assessment (EQA) on molecular detection of SARS-CoV-2, as well as data from a RECOVER survey assessing the molecular testing capacity and throughput of clinical laboratories in 36 countries.

Even as the lockdown is beginning to lift across the EU, public health measures COVID19 pandemic impact nearly every aspect of everyday life. Risk communication efforts are needed to explain the government advice and address the uncertainties of the population.

Understanding the kinetics of infectious virus shedding in relation to potential for transmission is crucial to guide infection prevention and control strategies. We assessed these questions using virus cultures of respiratory tract samples from hospitalized COVID-19 patients as a proxy for infectious virus shedding.

The home environment is a complex context for the care of sick and vulnerable people. A recent commentary in the Lancet, co-authored by a social scientist in the RECOVER consortium, draws attention to the challenges faced by those providing care in the home.

The research teams of INSERM and Orange Lab published a RECOVER-funded preprint paper population mobility reductions during COVID-19 epidemic in France under lockdown (Pullano et al. 2020). The study findings help predicting how and where restrictions will be the most effective in reducing the mobility and mixing of the population, thus aiding tuning recommendations when phasing out lockdown.