Research ethics support during the COVID-19 epidemic: a collaborative effort by South African Research Ethics Committees

Abstract

The COVID-2019 pandemic caused disruption of health services globally due to increased need for critical care facilities and collateral damage to routine healthcare services. Global and local research into disease pathogenesis and management strategies is central to a public health emergency response. South African legislation mandates that no health research may be conducted without approval from a registered Research Ethics Committee. For results to have maximum impact and relevance in a pandemic situation, ethics review and approval must be rapid and timeous, without compromising rigour and quality of review. This chapter argues that South African Research Ethics Committees were under-prepared for this task, largely due to gaps in national ethics guidance and the critical absence of the National Health Research Ethics Council. Although ethics guidance documents contain enabling clauses, no specified procedures for rapid review in emergencies exist. Consequently, and in an unprecedented initiative, several Research Ethics Committee chairpersons and members formed a spontaneous informal, ad hoc group, ‘Research Ethics Support in COVID-19 Pandemic’ (RESCOP), to share resources and support for managing the review of research related to COVID-19. The chapter outlines the processes put in place and mechanisms introduced by RESCOP in the interest of responsible and accountable, but rapid, ethics review. We describe good practices for rapid full ethics review of COVID-19 health research, including clinical trials. RESCOP’s innovative collaboration enabled rapid but thorough ethics review of research protocols during the epidemic. The processes established can serve as a good-practice model that could be adopted and adapted by other committees and future versions of national research ethics guidelines.