Physiological Societies Across the Globe Unite in an Effort to Handle the COVID-19 Pandemic

EditorialPhysiological Societies Across the Globe Unite in an Effort to Handle the COVID-19 PandemicSusan M. Barman, László Csernoch, and Jayasree SenguptaSusan M. BarmanMichigan State University, East Lansing, MichiganVice Chair, Board of the General Assembly, … See all authors Published Online:17 Feb 2021https://doi.org/10.1152/physiol.00001.2021MoreFiguresReferencesRelatedInformationPDF (86 KB)Download PDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesGet permissionsTrack citations ShareShare onFacebookXLinkedInWeChat The year 2020 will forever be cast in a negative light because of the coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19) pandemic that changed everyday life globally, with nearly 220 countries and territories experiencing its devastating impact. As 2020 came to an end, based on the data supplied by the World Health Organization, the novel coronavirus had infected over 81 million people worldwide and nearly 1.8 million people had died because of complications of COVID-19 (1). These numbers continue to grow at alarming rates. Whole countries or states across the globe have enacted rules designed to limit the spread of the virus by requiring inhabitants to stay home and adhere to social distancing; nonessential businesses have closed their doors, including restaurants, theaters, performing arts centers, barber shops, health clubs, and even churches. In many cases, schools have changed to online learning or at least markedly limited face-to-face activities; many youth, college, and professional sporting events have been canceled; and national and international travel has been curtailed. In many places, science laboratories were shuttered for months. The changes in life precipitated by COVID-19 have the potential to change human behavior forever and have certainly changed the everyday life of biomedical researchers and educators (2). Despite the global anxiety posed by the novel coronavirus, a bright spot is how it brought together teams of scientists across the globe who cooperated to develop treatments that hopefully will help to bring an end to fatalities linked to the pandemic (3). Remarkably, by the time 2020 came to an end, several manufacturers (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) had begun to release vaccines in multiple countries with high efficacy to control the devastating actions of the virus that causes COVID-19 (4). In fact, there are over 50 candidate vaccines under development globally, allowing us to see at least a glimpse of that proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel." In late summer 2020, the Board of the General Assembly of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (BGA/IUPS) reached out to member societies to gather information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their society operations and the activities of their members. Feedback was received from 25 physiological societies representing Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe/European Union, the Mideast, and Oceania. Table 1 and Table 2 capture the responses received to two pointed questions, respectively:Table 1. How has COVID-19 impacted the functioning of your Society?Member OrganizationResponseAmerican Physiological SocietyThe most obvious functional impact was the almost complete shutdown of our main headquarters in Rockville, MD for several months. The entire operation was transformed into a virtual effort; this is ongoing. We anticipate that a large part of the operation will continue in virtual mode into 2021. Some of our colleagues will continue working remotely for the foreseeable future. A survey revealed that a large percentage of staff find they can work efficiently from home, and our significant achievements during the pandemic have confirmed that this is the case. The absence of major commuting time for many staff residing in the Washington DC area has played a major role in this increase in efficiency, a positive impact of the pandemic.From a member point of view, we have achieved, and in many cases exceeded, the goals laid out in our last strategic plan, despite the pandemic. Interactions with member leaders on APS council, committees, in the sections, and in publications areas have continued with little disruption.The pandemic has also pushed APS more quickly than anticipated into the virtual meetings arena. In the past few months, we have hosted highly successful scientific and education meetings, webinars, town halls, and career development programs in which thousands of members have participated—many more, in fact, than for the equivalent live sessions at face-to-face meetings. The cancellation of our major meeting of the year at Experimental Biology (EB) was a difficult decision made in the early stages of the pandemic, in January, but turned out to be wise and necessary in retrospect. While the time frame of this decision did not allow us to replace EB fully in April 2020, we did organize a limited number of sessions online that were very well attended and received by our members. The 2021 EB meeting is also virtual, but the long lead-up time has allowed us to organize a more complete virtual meeting, using a professional online platform, with the other contributing societies that normally participate in EB.One positive effect of the new virtual life of APS is that we can serve our international members more effectively. Since our leadership meetings are virtual, it is now possible to envisage increasing the international representation in these efforts by, among other considerations, carefully taking account of geographic diversity and international time zones during the organization process.Another positive effect of the pandemic is that potential budget shortfalls (e.g., reduced journal subscription revenue, reduced meeting registration income) have been to some extent balanced by a large reduction in travel and associated costs normally expended to assemble committee members and leaders for a variety of meetings. It is likely that reduced travel expenses will be a permanent feature of our budgeting even when we move out of pandemic mode.Australian Physiological SocietyThe major impact has been the cancellation of our major events such as the 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting and our PhD research training award (a 2-day onsite research training event). This has deprived all our members of valuable opportunities to present their research and to network.Council has continued to function mostly unhindered, with twice-yearly Council meetings being moved from in-person to online.Our Annual General Meeting of all members is this year planned to be held online.Bangladesh Society of PhysiologistsLike other organizations, in this pandemic-induced lockdown, the Society activities are affected. Seminars and the meeting of the Society have been postponed.Very limited conversation regarding society activities has been made over the telephone as all the senior members are forced to stay home for health risk.By arranging Zoom meetings, efforts for regular meetings of the Society have been made to maintain the activity in a very limited scale.Despite this adverse situation, the Society successfully published its journal within the stipulated time.Bulgarian Society for Physiological SciencesSociety members write and publish articles how to fight the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic such as the recently published review, "Emerging Neurological and Psychobiological Aspects of COVID-19 Infection" in Brain Sciences 2020, vol. 10, issue 11, 852, doi:10.3390/brainsci10110852.For the 3rd Conference "Neurosciences—from Theory to Experiment and Practice," held in the University Campus Bachinovo of South-West University in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria 23–25 October 2020, all participating physiologists dedicated a special meeting discussing the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic and how to counteract it.Canadian Physiological SocietyWe held our first official Society symposium in May 2019 after 7–8 yr without having a meeting. We hoped to continue with this by hosting another symposium in May 2020, but this had to be cancelled due to lockdowns in Canada.Overall, the main objective of the Society has been to work towards re-energizing a national community for physiology, with a focus on sponsoring trainee activities.Our primary planning activities have been to look ahead towards late 2021, when we hope we can continue with symposium organization and other trainee activities.Chilean Society of Physiological SciencesThe Society's annual meeting was cancelled, but we managed to run the 2020 annual meeting in a virtual form. This activity has been very well valued.To open our region to Latin America researchers in physiology, we decided to have our 2020 annual meeting as a joint meeting with the Latin American Association of Physiological Sciences. We had more than 650 registered scientists for the meeting. This collaborative activity was a perfect platform for young researchers to show their data and establish new contacts with not only physiologists from LA but from all continents.Since March, the monthly meetings of the directory board of the Society have been virtual meetings, and the Society operations were unaltered. Our general feeling is that it was helpful to meet without the typical problems finding a suitable place and time to meet.The Society organizes regular selected seminars that have been cancelled since March. Mainly because we, as researchers and teachers, were involved in a new way to conduct these two activities virtually. This is a major weakness since there was not an option for interacting and establishing networks by meeting, talking, and discussing with the speaker.Chinese Association for Physiological SciencesThe COVID-19 had quite a negative impact on the routine operation of our Society in the beginning. Luckily, we transformed and advanced the management in terms of the operation. For instance, we have adopted the online application system for the review and approval of all the documents.The Zoom Cloud Meetings system has been used for our online meetings weekly so that all our directors and colleagues could easily communicate with each other, especially during the COVID-19 period.Chinese Physiological Society in TaipeiThe election of new Society council members was conducted through voting by post instead of our usual vote in-person due to the cancellation of our annual joint conference with other societies in March.Our council meeting was also conducted through web meeting to avoid gathering.Although the large-scale joint conference in Taipei was cancelled in March, another scientific meeting and teaching workshop hosted by the Society took place for our members in August 2020.We are watching closely with strict precautions to adjust the schedule for our council meetings in 2020/2021.Overall, the Society has functioned regularly with minimal obstacles due to COVID-19.Cuban Society of Biomedical Basic Sciences (formerly Cuban Society of Physiological Sciences)The Society had to respond and adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on academic and clinical instruction. Most of the preclinical conferences and scientific meetings were substituted by "online" activities.Revista Cubana de Investigaciones Biomédicas continues its work as usual. The editorial staff works at home to produce the journal that is now first among the Cuban scientific journals according to the last Scimago Journal Rank and is third among the Cuban journals in Google Scholar because of the number of received citations.Finnish Physiological SocietyIn Finland, emergency conditions were declared due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. This meant the closure of the Society, travel bans, and isolation.The Society had to hold its annual meeting on short notice as a remote meeting. To guarantee its legitimacy, the Governmental umbrella organizations of the scientific societies quickly made the necessary changes to the rules.The Society changed its scholarship policy so that instead of congress trips, scholarships were also awarded for other purposes.Grants to be used in 2020 were transferred for use in 2021 without a separate application. The Society moved to continuous application policy instead of fixed dates.French Society of PhysiologyCOVID-19 impacted our Society at the organizational level. However, we have overcome this unprecedented situation. We have organized the meetings of Scientific and Administrative Councils via Zoom.We are going to organize, via internet call system, the annual General meeting. As is the case for most of the national and international Congresses, we postponed the annual Congress of the Society that was scheduled for June 2020.German Physiological SocietyAll meetings in 2020 (i.e., Europhysiology2020 and the annual meeting of the young physiologists) were cancelled.All society board meetings were transformed to online meetings.We plan online meetings for young physiologists, the general assembly of our society, as well as "a day of physiology" covering research aspects for October 2020.Iranian Society of Physiology and PharmacologySince starting the COVID-19 pandemic, we increased our communications with the members in virtual space through websites, channels, e-mails, etc. to share information and new findings.The Society has encouraged physiologists and pharmacologists to design research projects about COVID-19, especially on the virus deleterious effects on the body physiology and potential treatments.We have also published a weekly newsletter to provide an overview of the COVID-19 situation in Iran and the world with the latest scientific news.Israel Society of Physiology and PharmacologyWe had to cancel a big meeting, and we are unsure if we can conduct our annual meeting.Life Science Switzerland (LS2)-PhysiologyWe had to adapt quickly to the pandemic situation and to cope with the COVID-19 crisis.We could not have our annual meeting on-site as planned, but we updated the program to offer an online version and to include extra short talks to increase the knowledge exchange among participants: https://meetings.ls2.ch/physiology2020.Physiological Society of IndiaThe Society organized the following five national webinar-based awareness programs against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic:Dept. of Sports Science, University of Calcutta; 21 August 2020 via Stream Yard and YouTube; Effect of Yoga in Sports Performance during COVID-19Dept. of Physiology, Midnapur College (Autonomous), Midnapore, West Bengal organized 1-day program; 29 August 2020; Development & Maintenance of Physical & Mental Wellness during COVID-19 PandemicDept. of Sports Science, University of Calcutta; Application of Biomechanics in Sports Performance—A COVID-19 PerspectiveDept. of Sports Science, University of Calcutta; 20 September 2020; Exercise Program and Nutritional Supplement to prevent COVID-19 and other viral infectionsDept. of Physiology, Berhampur Girls' College, Berhampur, Murshidabad, West Bengal; 25–27 September 2020; Three-Day National Webinar on COVID-19: Fighting Together and Moving ForwardPhysiological Society of JapanThe 97th Society Annual Meeting was Mar 17–19, 2020; the outbreak of COVID-19 occurred at the final stage of the meeting preparation. The meeting presidents made a courageous decision at the last minute to give up the on-site meeting, and to hold only in the presentation abstract issue of the official society journal, The Journal of Physiological Sciences. The council meeting and the general assembly were held in a hybrid style of on-site and online.The 98th Annual Meeting is scheduled for Mar 28–30, 2021. In Oct 2020, the meeting presidents decided to hold the meeting online.Physiological Society of NepalThe biggest impact of the COVID-19 on the Society and our members is the financial aspect. All our members are employed as physiology teachers in various medical colleges in the country. With the closure, the colleges adopted a "no work no pay" policy for the first few months. However, lately, most colleges have started to give salaries, but heavily reduced.The theory classes of the undergraduate courses are being conducted online. Some brief orientation and training were conducted to familiarize teachers to such methods.Because travel and movements are restricted, our members have been mostly confined to home. Research labs and works have stopped altogether.Our Society's regular meetings are on hold, and previously planned symposia, conference have been postponed indefinitely.Physiological Society of NigeriaOrdinarily, the Society Annual Scientific Conference and Annual General Meeting occur between the months of August and September. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to postpone the conference to next year, when it is hoped the situation will be better. The Society is considering the possibility of hosting the AGM through an online mode.In the last 6 mo, higher institutions have been closed. Members of the Society have had to work from home, and this has affected negatively teaching and research.Physiological Society of New ZealandOur major activity is to run our annual meeting, which is part of a larger professional society meeting called MedSciNZ. This year's meeting was cancelled, but we held a virtual meeting which was transformed into an awards symposium that was held over 2 half days. This symposium was formatted to allow us to present our student, emerging researcher, and early career researcher awards, plus our triannual medal for excellence in physiological research that is awarded to an established physiologist.We have resorted to running the Society via virtual Council meetings and have a virtual Annual General Meeting scheduled for mid-October.Slovak Physiological SocietyFortunately, we just managed to organize the annual meeting of the Society in February 2020 before the pandemic strike.Other smaller events with participation of our Society had to be cancelled.Committee meetings and correspondence (e.g., evaluation of the best posters at the annual meeting and the best publication 2019 of the Society members) are done electronically.Slovenian Physiological SocietyDespite the COVID-19 crises, the Society is active. We have organized in September a general assembly meeting via the videoconference Cisco Webex platform.On 10 December 2020 we are organizing the annual society meeting.The of Physiology 2020, which place each year on the day the in Physiology or is We will have and for the general teachers, members of the Society, etc. on physiology of with the focus on and virus physiology and the COVID-19 pandemic. 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How has COVID-19 impacted the functioning of your How has your Society its members to with the impact of COVID-19 on their teaching and OrganizationResponseAmerican Physiological part of our information the September issue of The was dedicated to the COVID-19 pandemic. We published articles on a of community during the pandemic, an with a member including how the pandemic has affected two articles about the physiology of the virus and and an about efforts being made on the and of a APS members to share their via and by We published a of these in the September issue of The transformed a of our into a COVID-19 that and scientific and to the pandemic. The information helpful and on pandemic-induced changes in work style and career such as with during the pandemic, and how to when are working from home. 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