Rapid Expert Consultations on the COVID-19 Pandemic: March 14, 2020-April 8, 2020 (2020)
Chapter: Front Matter
Rapid Expert Consultations on the
COVID-19 Pandemic
March 14, 2020-April 8, 2020
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, DC
www.nap.edu
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001
This activity was supported by a contract between the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (75A50120C00093). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-67690-8
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-67690-8
Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.17226/25784
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Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Rapid Expert Consultations for the COVID-19 Pandemic: March 14, 2020–April 8, 2020. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25784.
The National Academy of Sciences was established in 1863 by an Act of Congress, signed by President Lincoln, as a private, nongovernmental institution to advise the nation on issues related to science and technology. Members are elected by their peers for outstanding contributions to research. Dr. Marcia McNutt is president.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences to bring the practices of engineering to advising the nation. Members are elected by their peers for extraordinary contributions to engineering. Dr. John L. Anderson is president.
The National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) was established in 1970 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences to advise the nation on medical and health issues. Members are elected by their peers for distinguished contributions to medicine and health. Dr. Victor J. Dzau is president.
The three Academies work together as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation and conduct other activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions. The National Academies also encourage education and research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and increase public understanding in matters of science, engineering, and medicine.
Learn more about the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine at www.nationalacademies.org.
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STANDING COMMITTEE ON EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND 21ST CENTURY HEALTH THREATS
HARVEY V. FINEBERG (Chair), President, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
KRISTIAN G. ANDERSEN, Associate Professor, Immunology and Microbiology, The Scripps Research Institute
MARY T. BASSETT, FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
TREVOR BEDFORD, Associate Member, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
GEORGES C. BENJAMIN, Executive Director, American Public Health Association
RICHARD E. BESSER, President and Chief Executive Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
PETER DASZAK, President, EcoHealth Alliance
ELLEN P. EMBREY, Managing Partner, Stratitia Inc.
DIANE E. GRIFFIN, University Distinguished Service Professor and Alfred and Jill Sommer Chair of the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
MARGARET A. HAMBURG, Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Medicine
JOHN L. HICK, Faculty Emergency Physician, Hennepin Healthcare and Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Minnesota
KENT E. KESTER, Vice President and Head, Translational Science and Biomarkers, Sanofi Pasteur
PATRICIA A. KING, Professor of Law (Emeritus), Georgetown University Law Center
JONNA A. MAZET, Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology, University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine
PHYLLIS D. MEADOWS, Senior Fellow, The Kresge Foundation
TARA O’TOOLE, Executive Vice President, In-Q-Tel
ALEXANDRA PHELAN, Assistant Professor, Center for Global Health Science and Security, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Georgetown University
DAVID A. RELMAN, Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in Medicine, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University
MARK S. SMOLINSKI, President, Ending Pandemics
DAVID R. WALT, Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School
Project Staff
LISA BROWN, Senior Program Officer
AUTUMN DOWNEY, Senior Program Officer
CAROLYN SHORE, Senior Program Officer
SCOTT WOLLEK, Senior Program Officer
AURELIA ATTAL-JUNCQUA, Associate Program Officer
EMMA FINE, Associate Program Officer
MICHAEL BERRIOS, Research Associate
BRIDGET BOREL, Administrative Assistant
JULIE PAVLIN, Senior Director, Board on Global Health
ANDREW M. POPE, Senior Director, Board on Health Sciences Policy
Acknowledgments
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine would like to acknowledge the contributions of the following subject-matter experts in developing these rapid expert consultations.
DONALD BERWICK, Institute for Healthcare Improvement
CARLOS DEL RIO, Emory Vaccine Center
BARUCH FISCHHOFF, Carnegie Mellon University
DAN HANFLING, In-Q-Tel
JAMES HODGE, Arizona State University
SUNDARESAN JAYARAMAN, Georgia Tech
MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, University of Minnesota
ED NARDEL, Harvard University
JENNIFER NUZZO, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
RICHARD SERINO, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
BETH WEAVER, RESOLVE
MATTHEW WYNIA, University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities
The review of these rapid expert consultations was overseen by Bobbie Berkowitz, Columbia University School of Nursing; Ellen Wright Clayton, Vanderbilt University Medical Center; and Sue Curry, University of Iowa College of Public Health. They were responsible for making certain that independent examinations of these rapid expert consultations were carried out in accordance with the standards of the National Academies and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content rests entirely with the authors and the National Academies.
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Preface
The National Academies are a unique national resource. Their members represent the best in American science, engineering, and medicine. For more than a century, the National Academies have called upon their members and other experts to lend their knowledge and experience as volunteers in service to the nation. The National Academies have rightly been called objective, evidence-based, influential, and authoritative. In this instance, they have also proved to be quick.
The COVID-19 pandemic has demanded exceptional responses from many institutions, domestic and international, public and private. As the pandemic began to take hold in the United States, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, led by Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in the person of Dr. Robert Kadlec, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, turned to the National Academies for expert advice. Presidents Marcia McNutt, John Anderson, and Victor Dzau responded by setting up the Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats.
The standing committee held its first organizational meeting on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, and in consultation with the sponsors, prepared an initial list of scientific and technical questions that the COVID-19 pandemic posed. Sponsor assignments cascaded onto the committee, and the staff, members, and other experts responded with alacrity. The main work product in this phase has been the “rapid expert consultation,” a written product prepared by the committee and subject to accelerated review by the quality assurance arm of the National Academies, its Report Review Committee.
As I write this, just 1 month after the initial, organizing meeting, the standing committee has produced 11 rapid expert consultations in addition to the initial listing of important issues, and it has organized one informal telephone consultation on behalf of the sponsors, a mechanism that allows government officials to tap even more rapidly into the expertise of the standing committee members and others. As we look ahead, we anticipate that the committee will begin to focus on intermediate-term questions, where
the answers have a time constant measured in weeks to months rather than hours to days. We also expect to turn more regularly to the informal, telephonic consultations in which the sponsors can obtain expert input in a timely way and experts can be directly responsive to the most pressing questions.
With this expected transition in emphasis, this seems like an appropriate moment to collect the set of completed rapid expert consultations, assembled here. In this rapidly evolving pandemic, new knowledge emerges by the day, and these statements each represent a snapshot of what was known at a particular moment in time. While they were rapidly prepared, we also hope they represent sound, thoughtful, timely, and useful information for the decision makers who are shaping the nation’s response to COVID-19.
I would like to express my appreciation to Drs. Droegemeier and Kadlec who placed their confidence in the National Academies, to the Academy presidents who established the standing committee, to the members of the committee and other experts who stepped up whenever asked, to the outside reviewers and Report Review Committee staff and leaders who moved briskly to improve the final products, and above all, to the exceptional standing committee staff who labored literally day and night to produce these documents.
As the National Academies contribute to policy decisions with objective, scientific, evidence-based guidance, these rapid expert consultations stand as testimony to an additional capability of the National Academies to act as swiftly as the current crisis demands.
Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D.
Chair
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats
