Social distancing. Country-wide lockdowns. Mask mandates. In the last year, people around the world have been forced to adapt their everyday lives to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 – and the clinical trial community is no exception. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a variety of challenges and limitations for trial managers. Many contract research organizations temporarily …
View from My Window, Part 2: The View from Your Window Matters
In January, we introduced the social media phenomenon “View From My Window,” a Facebook Group that gained popularity as COVID-related quarantines locked the world’s citizens behind closed doors. The group is made up of over 2.2 million members who have posted pictures of their inside-out views during lockdown. That’s a pretty phenomenal number of users, …
Mosaic Nanoparticles Might Provide a Design to Develop Products That Provide Immunity to Multiple Coronaviruses
Zoonotic coronaviruses, which are those that have made the leap from animals to humans, have caused three major epidemics in the last two decades. The most recent zoonotic coronavirus to result in a pandemic was SARS-CoV-2. In the last year, multiple vaccines have been developed to prevent infection, and researchers are working on therapeutic drugs …
QPS Missouri Delivers COVID-19 Vaccines
The QPS clinical trial site in Springfield, Missouri, is staffed with healthcare providers and front-line healthcare workers and has remained open during the pandemic, providing clinical trial services to support new drug and vaccine development. Recently, as part of the US COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, QPS Missouri was granted an allotment of COVID-19 vaccine for its front-line …
A View from My Window, Part 1: Building Community During COVID-19
In the first weeks of March 2020, the world came to a halt like nothing we have ever seen before. COVID-19 infections were increasing across the globe, and health officials didn’t know how the disease was spread, who was most at risk, or even how to stop it. Country after country began to lock down, …
Could Chicken Antibodies Temporarily Prevent COVID-19 Infections?
Although the first COVID-19 vaccines approved by governmental regulators are slowly being rolled out in certain countries, a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine is not currently available worldwide. To continue fighting the pandemic, researchers are exploring new and innovative ways to protect people from SARS-CoV-2. One team of researchers from Stanford University is currently working …
The Link Between Pollution and COVID-19 Deaths
Several months after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many journalists began reporting on the fact that, due to reduced levels of transportation, lockdowns were leading to reduced air pollution. This news was celebrated, as we’ve known for decades that air pollution is detrimental to human health. However, there is also a troubling connection between air …
Are Sports Bubbles Effective in the Fight Against COVID-19?
The word bubble has several meanings. Although it’s most commonly used to describe a sphere of liquid enclosing air or gas, it can also be used to describe an inflatable dome-shaped structure or an enclosure that protects patients from infection. Lately, bubble is also being used to describe an area in which competing sports teams reside in isolation in …
Resiliency in CRO Operations During the COVID-19 Pandemic
A Conversation with QPS Holdings LLC Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ben Chien, PhD NOVEMBER 2020 As QPS Holdings LLC Chairman President, and CEO, Ben Chien, PhD, leads a large global organization with locations across the US, Europe, and Asia. Since its inception in 1995, the company has grown from a three-employee molecular bioanalysis …
What Field Researchers Can Teach Us About Quarantine and Isolation
As countries around the world move through various stages of quarantine and restrictions on public life, many people are finding themselves more isolated than they are accustomed to. Contact with someone who has the novel coronavirus can require a two-week quarantine, further restricting their movement and contact with others. For most people, this is an …
