I have never seen an end to an academic semester quite like this one. While we unfortunately will not be celebrating in our traditional ways, I am exceedingly proud of what we have accomplished over these last few months. UNC researchers have led the charge in responding to the pandemic crisis by developing tests and therapies, understanding coronavirus biology and epidemiology, and studying health outcomes and impacts on society from all angles.
Ralph Baric of the Gillings School of Global Public Health is one the world’s leading experts on coronaviruses and therapies for treating and curing them. He and a team of diverse researchers are discovering and testing therapies for the disease and pioneering strategies that will combat the spread of the virus. Just last week, the FDA announced that one of the treatments Baric and his team have worked on shortened recovery time for COVID-19 patients, and that was on the heels of encouraging preclinical results of another therapy.
Several researchers from the Marsico Lung Institute have been working as a team to map the entry sites for SARS-CoV-2 in the respiratory tract and are exploring the risk/benefit aspects of drugs commonly used to treat respiratory disease for COVID-19. Clinical microbiology experts at the UNC Medical Center and School of Medicine developed a coronavirus diagnostic test that is now being used to test for COVID-19 among UNC Health patients. And READDI, a new nonprofit recently launched at UNC, is creating self-stable
antiviral therapeutics for the virus families that cause the majority of the world’s epidemics, allowing for rapid development of antiviral treatments for future diseases.
These are but a few of the many examples of how our colleagues have nimbly and quickly responded to the novel coronavirus crisis. Carolina’s deep strengths in virology, epidemiology, pharmacology, biology, and other health sciences positioned us to do so. And our social scientists are hard at work identifying the societal, psychological, and cultural impacts social distancing and other unique policies will have on everyday life.
I encourage you to read more about the promising work our researchers are conducting across all fields on our special COVID-19 coverage website. If you have questions on how research operations have been affected during this time, you can find most answers on our resources for researchers page. And finally, if you’d like to help financially support UNC’s fight against COVID-19, you can contribute to the UNC COVID-19 Research Accelerator Fund.
Soon we will be sharing plans for resuming research operations in a methodical way that ensures the safety of our workforce. In the meantime, thank you to the research community for all that you do and continue to do. Stay safe.