A medical worker carries out new coronavirus tests at an elementary school in Daejeon, 164 kilometers south of Seoul, on July 2, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, July 3 (Korea Bizwire) – Social distancing measures and the temporary closure of research institutes to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are making it difficult for bio-health researchers to carry out their clinical tests.
According to industry sources on Thursday, the Korea Health Industry Development Institute conducted a survey of 362 chief researchers engaged in the government’s bio-health R&D projects.
The survey showed that the vast majority of researchers expressed concerns about the disruption of their clinical tests.
In detail, 56 percent of the respondents said clinical tests had been disrupted, while 36 percent said there was a chance that clinical tests would be disrupted in the future.
Among those who said clinical tests had been disrupted or might be disrupted in the future, 44 percent pointed out the difficulty in recruiting new subjects for clinical tests as the biggest problem arising from social distancing measures, followed by the difficulty in maintaining existing subjects to continue to participate in clinical tests (26 percent) and the difficulty in securing appropriate sites for clinical tests due to safety issues at hospitals (21 percent).
Another 42 percent of the total respondents answered that the supply of medical research supplies had been disrupted due to the collapse of global distribution networks.
Seven out of 10 researchers said they had problems with internal and external cooperation primarily due to the difficulty in having face-to-face meetings (37 percent), the cancellation and delay of research-related events (28 percent), and the temporary shut-down of hospitals and research centers (19 percent).
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
