Environment submissions database

In March 2020 all buildings not undertaking COVID-19 research were closed. Buildings, laboratories and libraries were reconfigured for social distancing. All buildings (>150), including libraries and collections, required for research that could not be progressed from home have been open since September 2020. Our priority throughout the pandemic has been the safety and wellbeing of staff, students and our local community. One example was the early set-up of walk-in “pods” for staff and students to access rapid PCR-based COVID-19 testing to manage and suppress outbreaks, quickly and effectively. In Main Panel A over 25% of our principal investigators were fully involved in the pandemic response, including in frontline clinical roles in hospitals. Research was redirected towards COVID-19 initiatives of global urgency. Partner NHS Trusts had to pause all non-COVID-19 research. We received £15m in donations for express COVID-19 research; we established rapid peer-review and deployed funds in four rounds within three months. We supported the national response by shipping equipment, including our PCR testing machines, to a Lighthouse centre in Milton Keynes. We launched a COVID-19 Scholarships Extensions Fund for postgraduate students holding Oxford-managed scholarships; we deployed Wellcome, UKRI and other COVID-19 support funds for researchers strictly according to need. We significantly increased hardship funds for self-funded or externally-funded students. We developed guidance for examiners of doctoral theses to account for pandemic effects; we modified probation and initial period of office processes for research staff and Associate Professors respectively, taking care to account for differential impacts of the pandemic on protected characteristics and other groups. We surveyed research staff to identify major impacts of the pandemic. Following survey responses, we created the COVID-19 Rebuilding Research Momentum Fund. The Fund has provided grants to support re-starting research activities, based on prioritised need, including childcare provision, home IT provision and training, and buy-outs from teaching for research. Within 100 days of learning the genetic sequence of COVID-19 in January 2020, researchers in the Jenner Institute had a vaccine candidate. We provided a £1m underwrite from our Strategic Research Fund to enable manufacture for trials of the vaccine candidate at our risk. In parallel, we started trial recruitment and by October 2020, 28,000 volunteers had received our vaccine candidate in the UK, South Africa, Brazil and US. Meanwhile, we signed a deal with AstraZeneca for the global distribution of the vaccine, should it be effective. The vaccine was one of the first worldwide to be proven safe, effective and was granted emergency use licensure in over 50 countries. The vaccine is easy to store and deploy, and provided at cost to everyone during the pandemic, and to low and middle income countries in perpetuity. Oxford researchers led the RECOVERY trial, with over 12,000 patients involved in testing therapeutics for COVID-19. By June 2020 the trial demonstrated that an everyday, inexpensive steroid, dexamethasone, cuts the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators and by a fifth for those on oxygen, making it the first proven drug for treatment of COVID-19.