Coronavirus: European Commission mobilises €123 million for research and innovation to combat the threat of variants

This first emergency funding under Horizon Europe adds to a range of EU-funded research and innovation actions

to fight the coronavirus and contributes to the Commission's overall action to prevent, mitigate and respond to the impact of coronavirus variants, in line with the new European bio-defence preparedness plan HERA Incubator.

New calls for urgent research into coronavirus variants

The Commission launched new calls that complement earlier actions to develop treatments and vaccines by

organising and conducting clinical trials to advance the development of promising therapeutics and vaccines against SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. They will support the development of large scale, COVID-19 cohorts and

networks beyond Europe's borders, forging links with European initiatives, as well as reinforce the infrastructures needed to share data, expertise, research resources and expert services among researchers and

research organisations.

The projects funded are expected to:

• Establish new and/or build on

  existing large-scale, multi-centre and regional or multinational

  cohorts, including beyond Europe's borders, which should rapidly advance

  the knowledge on SARS-CoV-2 and its emerging variants.

• Further develop promising therapeutic

  or vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, having already

  completed preclinical development in clinical studies.

• Support research infrastructures to

  speed up data sharing and deliver fast research support and expertise,

  to confront the coronavirus variants and to be ready for future

  epidemics.

The successful consortia are expected

to collaborate with other relevant initiatives and projects at national,

regional, and international level to maximise synergies and

complementarity and avoid duplication of the research efforts.

These emergency calls will tackle the short to medium-term threat and simultaneously prepare for the future.

They will contribute to building the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), which will enable the EU to anticipate and better tackle future pandemics.

Horizon Europe calls:

1. FAIR and open data sharing in support to European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases
2. Research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19 and other infectious disease epidemics

    

   Please note that under this Research Infrastructure call above, in “Topic conditions”, there is the following provision:

   Considering the Union’s interest to make accessible to its

   researchers the most advanced research infrastructures, wherever they

   are in the world, legal entities established in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Russia, Singapore and

   USA, which provide, under the grant, access to their research

   infrastructures to researchers from Member States and Associated

   Countries, are exceptionally eligible for funding from the Union under this topic.

3. Vaccines & therapeutic clinical trials to boost COVID-19 prevention and treatment
4. Cohorts united against COVID-19 variants of concern