Posted 10 August 2021
The presence of COVID-19 in our community has disrupted the lives of every single Australian. As the national voice of the health and medical research sector, Research Australia has committed to understanding the specific impact on our health and medical researchers.
In May last year they conducted the first survey and identified the short-term effects of COVID-19 on Australia’s health and medical research community. When this survey was conducted at the end of 2020, most of Australia was relatively free of COVID-19. Victoria was just coming out of a wave of infection that had locked down much of the state for 112 days. There was the hope of vaccines arriving in the new year and a swift transition to a post COVID normal.
Since then, new waves of COVID-19 have swept the globe, once again placing health systems under great pressure and greatly impacting our daily lives and work. At the time of publication of this report, lockdowns are in place in a number of states.
In this context, the findings of this second survey of researchers remain as relevant as several months ago, and it is all the more important that we act on the lessons it gives us. Adapting and protecting our health and medical research workforce and the vital work researchers undertake for us all, has to be a priority.
Read the outcomes in the fourth report in their COVID-19 series which expands on the findings in the earlier survey and explores the ongoing impact of the pandemic.
