Changes in Purchases for Intensive Care Medicines During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Global Time Series Study

EFAS/EAN survey on the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on European clinical autonomic education and research

PURPOSE

To understand the influence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on clinical autonomic education and research in Europe.

METHODS

We invited 84 European autonomic centers to complete an online survey, recorded the pre-pandemic-to-pandemic percentage of junior participants in the annual congresses of the European Federation of Autonomic Societies (EFAS) and European Academy of Neurology (EAN) and the pre-pandemic-to-pandemic number of PubMed publications on neurological disorders.

RESULTS

Forty-six centers answered the survey (55%). Twenty-nine centers were involved in clinical autonomic education and experienced pandemic-related didactic interruptions for 9 (5; 9) months. Ninety percent (n = 26/29) of autonomic educational centers reported a negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education quality, and 93% (n = 27/29) established e-learning models. Both the 2020 joint EAN-EFAS virtual congress and the 2021 (virtual) and 2022 (hybrid) EFAS and EAN congresses marked higher percentages of junior participants than in 2019. Forty-one respondents (89%) were autonomic researchers, and 29 of them reported pandemic-related trial interruptions for 5 (2; 9) months. Since the pandemic begin, almost half of the respondents had less time for scientific writing. Likewise, the number of PubMed publications on autonomic topics showed the smallest increase compared with other neurological fields in 2020-2021 and the highest drop in 2022. Autonomic research centers that amended their trial protocols for telemedicine (38%, n = 16/41) maintained higher clinical caseloads during the first pandemic year.

CONCLUSIONS

The COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on European clinical autonomic education and research. At the same time, it promoted digitalization, favoring more equitable access to autonomic education and improved trial design.

Plasma procurement and plasma product safety in light of the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of the plasma industry

This review, written from the perspective of the plasma industry, discusses plasma procurement and plasma product safety in light of the COVID‐19 pandemic. The COVID‐19 pandemic impacted the whole world and, therefore, not unexpectedly, the pharmaceutical industry too. In spite of this, the plasma protein industry has continued to provide life saving therapies to critically ill patients. Moreover, companies have collected COVID convalescent plasma (CP) to support development of investigational therapies, for example, hyperimmune globulins to potentially treat SARS‐CoV‐2 infection, and collaborated with those collecting COVID CP for direct transfusion, which has been made available under emergency use in the United States. For plasma that is fractionated to become a therapy, general knowledge of coronaviruses and numerous new studies on the structure and function of SARS‐CoV‐2 provide reassurance that existing industry precautions, including donor selection, as well as virus inactivation and removal steps during the manufacturing process are sufficient to maintain the high standards of virus safety of plasma products. The pandemic also revealed the vulnerability and inadequacy of the current plasma ecosystem. There is a need for more plasma to be collected around the world to meet the growing need for safe and efficacious plasma‐derived therapies. This requires outdated regulatory and policy restrictions to be realigned with current scientific evidence. More countries around the world should be in a position to contribute to global supply of plasma so that patients with life‐threatening conditions ‐ and often no alternative therapeutic solutions ‐ have better access to care.