COVID-19: How Australia’s Health and Medical Research Sector Is Responding

This report, the first in Research Australia’s COVID-19 series, documents how the Australian health and medical research and innovation sector responded to the pandemic in its early months. It draws on responses to a call-out to Research Australia’s membership in April 2020, which asked members for examples of the COVID-19 research they were undertaking. The examples are presented state by state and territory by territory, grouped under the themes of understanding the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, vaccine development, therapies, testing and diagnostics, health system and workforce, and community. The report notes that it is a snapshot rather than a complete catalogue. Contextual data show that Australia invests approximately $7.9 billion per annum in health and medical research and innovation, with 52% undertaken in the higher education sector, and that this investment is 4% of total health expenditure of $185.4 billion in 2017-18. Cross-cutting observations include accelerated collaboration across organisations, sectors and international borders, the repurposing of existing research and expertise, and attention to both immediate and long-term impacts. The report concludes that this capacity rests on prior investment, identifies funding processes, internal ethics and approval processes and constraints on implementation as factors that slowed researchers, and warns that reduced university income from international students threatens the research pipeline.