PHE Knowledge and Library Services (KLS) has produced this page to help those working on the current coronavirus outbreak, to identify and access emerging evidence as it is published.
Most of the resources are freely accessible but some may ask for an OpenAthens sign-in. It is therefore important that your OpenAthens details are up-to-date. PHE staff unable to access an article or resource can email libraries@phe.gov.uk for assistance. Non-PHE staff are advised to contact their local health librarian for support if necessary.
We do not accept responsibility for the availability, reliability or content of the items included, and do not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them.
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There are eight ways to keep up to date with the latest advice, guidance, and research about COVID-19: 1. Official daily government COVID-19 update Daily updates about the status of COVID-19 in the UK published by Public Health England and the Department of Health and Social Care. The COVID-19 The PHE COVID-19 Evidence team produces rapid reviews and evidence summaries on COVID-19-related topics, details of which are available on this page, along with contact details for the team. 3. COVID-19 Alert - PHE Knowledge and Library Services PHE Knowledge and Library Services produce a daily alert containing links to research and news on the latest coronavirus outbreak. If you would like to receive this email alert, which contains the latest research articles and news from government departments, please contact libraries@phe.gov.uk. 4. PHE COVID-19 Literature Digest The PHE COVID-19 Literature Digest team produces an evidence digest three times per week, which contains evidence from journal articles, both published and in press/preprints. Please note that preprints are preliminary reports of work that have NOT been peer-reviewed. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behaviour and should NOT be reported in news media as established information. The evidence is organised into 9 themes (serology and immunology, vaccine development, diagnostics, genomics, epidemiology and clinical, transmission, infection control, treatment, and modelling). If you want to be added to the email distribution list, please send a request to COVID.LitDigest@phe.gov.uk and you will receive the latest literature digest (now produced Monday, Wednesday and Friday) straight to your inbox. Below are links to all the issues: 5. PHE Behavioural Science Reference Cell Literature Report The PHE Behavioural Science Reference Cell produces a weekly literature report capturing a range of COVID-19-related work in the field of behavioural science. Below are links to all the issues: 6. PHE Knowledge and Library Service Weekly Care Homes Evidence Digest This weekly digest contains a selection of evidence published in the preceding 7 days, in relation to the prevention and control of COVID-19 in home care/care home settings. A number of Covid-19 review repositories, an existing PHE Covid-19 evidence digest, Ovid Medline and Embase, Social Care Online, medRxiv (pre-print server) and various websites are searched. Below are links to all the issues: 7. PHE co/secondary infections with COVID-19 literature search results This resource aims to highlight a small selection of recent Co/secondary infection with COVID-19 papers. A literature search is conducted by Knowledge and Library Services and categorised by pathogen by the Co/secondary infections Team. A report is generated once a fortnight on a Wednesday. Below are links to all the issues: This site tracks retractions of research papers about COVID-19, and is updated as needed. This section contains guidance about the COVID-19 vaccines, information on vaccines in development, and links to the published study results relating to the COVID-19 vaccine trials. Guidance COVID-19: the green book, chapter 14a Updated 11 December 2020 by Public Health England, this chapter includes: This is provisional guidance subject to MHRA approval of each vaccine. National protocol for COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]) Vaccines in development The National Institute for Health Research provides information about ongoing coronavirus vaccine research. Published vaccine trial results This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of vaccine research, but a collection of the published trial results. Please contact Covid19.Dailyalerts@phe.gov.uk if you think a vital paper is missing. BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine) Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee Meeting ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (AZD1222) (Oxford vaccine) Safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (AZD1222) against SARS-CoV-2: an interim analysis of four randomised controlled trials in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine (Moderna vaccine) Efficacy and safety of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine Safety and immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 vaccine in older adults An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — preliminary report Managing vaccine misinformation The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication: A practical guide for improving vaccine communication and fighting misinformation The Government has published a roadmap for how and when the UK will adjust its response to the COVID-19 crisis. The Wider impacts of COVID-19 on Health (WICH) monitoring tool brings together metrics to assess the wider impacts of COVID-19 on health. PHE has produced a collection of guidance for health professionals. Public Health England (PHE) is undertaking a regular analysis of their chemical incident data and UK poisoning data provided by the National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) to evaluate whether there are any potential public health risks related to toxic substances as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analyses are published here: The Health Foundation has created a regularly updated COVID-19 policy tracker, documenting national government and health and social care system responses to COVID-19 in England, and how they change over time. Coronavirus guidance for clinicians and NHS managers. Contains information for Primary care, Secondary care and Community health, social care, mental health trusts and ambulance services. This document is intended to outline principles for the design of COVID-19 Local Outbreak Plans, which are intended to: build on existing plans to manage outbreaks in specific settings, ensure the challenges of COVID-19 are understood, consider the impact on local communities and ensure the wider system capacity supports Directors of Public Health. Up-to-date guidance and information from HEE, NHS England and NHS Improvement as well as the government to help health professionals, HEE staff and the public respond to coronavirus (COVID-19). The Institute of Health Visiting has produced Delivering the Health Visitor Healthy Child Programme during the COVID-19 pandemic and additional guidance, to help health visitors supporting new parents and their children. The LGA is providing useful information for councils on COVID-19. Policy tracker which provides a description and timeline of national policy and health system responses to COVID-19 in England. The full tracker includes data on what changes have been introduced, when, why, and by whom – as well as how these changes have been communicated by policymakers. The Faculty of Occupational Medicine is a charity committed to improving health at work, and they have created COVID-related guidance, including guidance for healthcare professionals on return to work for patients with long-COVID. RCOG has published guidance for healthcare professionals on coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in pregnancy, published by the RCOG, Royal College of Midwives, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Public Health England and Health Protection Scotland. This is a regularly updated collection of guidelines, web resources and journal articles on coronavirus relevant to skin diseases and dermatology. SAGE provides scientific and technical advice to support government decision-makers during emergencies. These resources have been produced by international and UK based organisations to support the management of COVID-19: NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence): Rapid guidelines and evidence reviews Centers for Disease Control and Prevention European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control European Commission - action and response International Association of National Public Health Institutes International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) FEMA Center for Domestic Preparedness Elsevier Novel Coronavirus Information Center MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis The Sphere standards and the Coronavirus response Health Information and Quality Authority The current COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented in modern times and the scale and complexity of the response required is unique from any other incident. With its expertise in virology and epidemiology, and the well-developed public health infrastructure within England, PHE is uniquely placed to undertake a number of initiatives to better understand and predict future trends in COVID-19. The COVID-19 register provides details of PHE led studies that have taken place since February 2020. It includes only PHE led studies and not collaborative studies led by non-PHE investigators. The register will be updated every two months. Last updated: 29th October 2020. PHE Rapid Reviews The PHE Evidence Cell has been producing scoping searches and summaries, evidence summaries, and rapid reviews. These are available here, along with a description of the methodologies undertaken. The PHE Knowledge and Library Services Team has compiled a Guide to Covid-19 Rapid Review Collections, to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort. At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, many publishers made their content freely available to ensure that health practitioners have access to the best available evidence. This section brings these resources together, to make them more accessible. Publisher Collections Books PHE Knowledge and Library Services have compiled a coronavirus book collection, for PHE staff. If PHE staff would like to make a book purchase suggestion you may do so by emailing libraries@phe.gov.uk. Evidence Collections The following organisations are providing access to rapid reviews, evidence syntheses, and specialist topics related to COVID-19: National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Oxford COVID-19 Evidence Service EPPI-Centre: a living systematic map of the evidence Ireland National Health Library and Knowledge Service (NHL&KS) Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA), Ireland Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine If you need assistance with developing and running searches, PHE staff can contact libraries@phe.gov.uk. If you would like a specialist to undertake a search for you please log into our Knowledge and Library Service Enquiries Portal to submit a literature search request. Non-PHE staff are advised to contact their local health librarian for support if necessary. Research methods for health and disaster risk management Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health-EDRM) has recently emerged as a critical field for research, policy, and practice as a result of the growing recognition of health as a core dimension in disaster risk management. The World Health Organization has produced this reference book about methods to guide Health-EDRM, and chapter 6.2 is specifically about how to identify and access reports of existing research. Database searching This section provides details of COVID-19-related information sources, including databases, preprint servers, grey literature, search terms, and searching strategies for specific sources. In addition, you will also find links to live literature searches, and reference management software.
Google and Google Scholar are two popular information sources, but there are also some bibliographic databases, such as PubMed, Medline, Embase, Global Health, and Global Index Medicus, which support more advanced searching and provide access to relevant biomedical journals. More information about accessing databases is available here. The COVID-19 Portfolio has been created by the National Institutes of Health. It is a comprehensive, expert-curated source for publications and preprints related to either COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. It includes articles from PubMed and preprints from arXiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, medRxiv, Research Square, and SSRN, and is updated daily. The MedNar database is a US resource which searches journal articles, medical societies, and other government resources. To search these resources, it is important to use the right terminology. This is not an exhaustive list of COVID-19 search terms, as the terminology is changing regularly, but it is a starting point, and a combination of these terms can be used to search the information sources described above: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) The U.S. National Library of Medicine produces the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus, a controlled and hierarchically-organized vocabulary, used for indexing, cataloguing, and searching of biomedical and health-related information. Here are some multi-language versions of MeSH: A number of organisations have developed search strategies to make it easier for people to find the evidence on freely-available information sources: Public Health England National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) CADTH has developed a set of literature searching tools for COVID-19, which include search strings, and links to grey literature resources. Google Scholar GIDEON (Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Online Network) To reduce duplication of effort and maintain consistency in searching, librarians are sharing their search strategies, so that they can be re-used and adapted by other searchers: Rayyan is a free web application to help systematic review authors create systematic reviews and collaborate on them. They have created a public Rayyan review, made up of the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset, published by the Allen Institute for AI. The dataset contains over 45,000 scholarly articles, including over 33,000 with full text, about COVID-19 and the coronavirus family of viruses. Once logged in, the review is in the "Other Reviews" tab (called "Review containing the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset"). The references can be viewed and exported in order to create systematic reviews. Clinical Trials National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Innovation Observatory Cochrane COVID-19 Trials Register Cytel COVID-19 Clinical Trial Tracker Research Projects The UK Collaborative on Development Research (UKCDR) and GLoPID-R Trusted sources from Health Education England Information in other languages Other sources of consumer health information Patient experience Information about specific conditions Cancer Pregnancy Hand hygiene The following organisations provide epidemiological information: Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy China Center for Disease Control and Prevention Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering ProMED International Society for Infectious Diseases Some online courses are freely available to improve knowledge about COVID-19: Coronavirus: Learning for the health and care workforce (via e-Learning for Healthcare) COVID-19: Tackling the Novel Coronavirus FEMA Center for Domestic Preparedness training materials Science Matters: Let’s talk about COVID19 Finding the Evidence Training International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) PHE Knowledge and Library Services The following organisations provide fact checking on a variety of topics, including COVID-19: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Myth busters Cutting through the Covid-19 confusion The Network for Public Health Law has produced a primer outlining legal, policy and practical guidance to understand the Novel Coronavirus and its related public health emergency response. Keeping up to date
18/12/2020
COVID-19 vaccines
This protocol was published on 10 January 2021, by Public Health England. It is for the administration of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]) to individuals in accordance with the national COVID-19 vaccination programme.
Polack FP, Thomas SJ, Kitchin N, Absalon J, Gurtman A, Lockhart S, Perez JL, Perez Marc G, Moreira ED, Zerbini C, Bailey R, Swanson KA
The New England Journal of Medicine, 2020, December 10
FDA Briefing Document: Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
US Food and Drug Administration
December 10, 2020
Voysey M, Costa Clemens SA, Madhi SA, Weckx LY, Folegatti PM, Aley PK, et al.
The Lancet, 2020, December 08
Baden LR, El Sahly HM, Essink B, Kotloff K, Frey S, Novak R, et al.
New England Journal of Medicine, 2020, December 30
Anderson EJ, Rouphael NG, Widge AT, Jackson LA, Roberts PC, Makhene M, et al.
New England Journal of Medicine, 2020, December 17
Jackson LA, Anderson EJ, Rouphael NG, Roberts PC, Makhene M, Coler RN, et al.
New England Journal of Medicine, 2020, November 2020
by Lewandowsky S, Cook J, Schmid P, Holford DL, Finn A, et al.
This handbook is for journalists, doctors, nurses, policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, parents – it’s for everyone who wants to know more about:
Resources for UK-based health professionals
3rd Nov 2020
20th Aug 2020
Guideline sources
1. The first section covers fundamental principles which are crucial to a successful, holistic intervention.
2. The second covers relevant standards and guidance in the handbook’s Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion (WASH) and Health chapters.
PHE-led COVID-19 studies
Evidence-based collections
Searching for the evidence
Resource Details
Guide to Covid-19 Rapid Review Collections This resource has been created by the PHE Knowledge and Library services team. It is a reference guide to organisations who produce rapid reviews or evidence summaries on COVID-19 topics. Its purpose is to enable the quick discovery of evidence to answer research questions. It is made available so that those who intend to undertake reviews can check the evidence base before doing so, thus avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort. Please note that it is not an exhaustive list.
PROSPERO This is an international prospective register of systematic reviews, rapid reviews, and umbrella reviews. They are fast-tracking registration of protocols related to COVID-19. Before starting a systematic review, check this resource, and if one is already being undertaken, please do not duplicate without good reason. Switch to another topic to avoid research waste and contribute more effectively to tackling the pandemic.
COVID-END This is an inventory of ‘best evidence syntheses’ for all types of decisions being faced by those who are part of the COVID-19 pandemic response. The evidence is divided into four parts: public-health measures (e.g. masks and tests), clinical management of COVID-19 (e.g. prescription drugs) and pandemic-related conditions (e.g. mental health and addictions issues), health-system arrangements (e.g., scaling capacity up or down and virtual-care alternatives to in-person care), and economic and social responses (e.g., classroom and public-transit changes). Before starting a systematic review, check this resource, and if one is already being undertaken, please do not duplicate without good reason. Switch to another topic to avoid research waste and contribute more effectively to tackling the pandemic.
L·OVE platform This is a Living OVerview of COVID-19-related Evidence. The word ‘living’ describes a system that is updated as soon as new evidence becomes available. It maps and organises all the best evidence on COVID-19. This resource is part of the Epistemonikos multilingual database of health evidence, the largest source of systematic reviews relevant for health-decision making, and a large source of other types of scientific evidence.
WHO Global Research Database on COVID-19 This database represents a comprehensive multilingual source of current literature on the topic. It is updated daily from searches of bibliographic databases, hand searching, and the addition of other expert-referred scientific articles.
LitCovid Produced by the National Library of Medicine, this resource provides a central access to 72516 (and growing) relevant articles about COVID-19 in PubMed. The articles are updated daily and are organised under 8 headings (general, mechanism, transmission, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, case report, and forecasting). They are further categorised by different research topics and geographic locations for improved access.
Children and COVID-19 Research Library Curated by UNICEF, this is a curated collection of research about COVID-19 and children.
coronavirus*[Title] OR coronovirus*[Title] OR coronoravirus*[Title] OR coronaravirus*[Title] OR corono-virus*[Title] OR corona-virus*[Title] OR “Coronavirus”[Mesh] OR “Coronavirus Infections”[Mesh] OR “Wuhan coronavirus” [Supplementary Concept] OR COVID-19[Title] OR CORVID-19[Title] OR “2019nCoV”[Title] OR “2019-nCoV”[Title] OR WN-CoV[Title] OR nCoV[Title] OR “SARS-CoV-2”[Title] OR HCoV-19[Title] OR “novel coronavirus”[Title] OR (pneumonia[Title/Abstract] OR outbreak*[Title/Abstract] OR respiratory-illness*[Title/Abstract] OR respiratory- disease*[Title/Abstract] OR respiratory-symptom*[Title/Abstract] OR respiratory-infection*[Title/Abstract] OR food-market*[Title/Abstract] OR wild-life[Title/Abstract] OR sea-food[Title/Abstract]) AND (Wuhan[Title/Abstract] OR China[Title/Abstract] OR Chinese[Title/Abstract])
2019nCoV|"2019 nCoV|CoV|coronavirus"|"2019 novel|new coronavirus|cov"|"wuhan coronavirus|cov|ncov|outbreak" |"wuhan*coronavirus|cov|ncov|outbreak" |"wuhan**coronavirus|cov|ncov|outbreak"|"coronavirus|cov|ncov*wuhan"
Clinical trials and research projects
Information for the public
Epidemiological information
Training
Fact checking
Legal, policy and practical guidance
