Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Education and Scientific Research in the Biomedical Sciences

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant different consequences for everyday life of every human being, as well as on the functioning of health, educational and scientific institutions. Objective: The aim of this article is to provide information on impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the biomedical sciences, and publications, as wll as impact on education in medcine and clinical training. Methods: Papers published of influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the main aim were searched and analyzed. Results: Many basic research labs quickly tuned their priorities and continud to study different aspects of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19. Biomedical sciences have become an important area in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, due to the unique challenges posed by the pandemic, including epidemiological aspects, immune mechanisms of the disease, clinical parameters of this essentially multisystem disease, virus properties, infection mechanisms, and later work on finding vaccines and everything that is needed. There are several studies that point to the negative impact of the pandemic on biomedical education, especially in the acquisition of practical clinical skills among medical students. The negative impact, both on basic education in medicine, and also on the acquisition of practical knowledge within various clinical disciplines, especially surgery, unfortunately continues. The COVID-19 pandemic has mobilised researchers worldwide on a scale and timeframe that have never been seen before for one specific disease. The number of COVID-19 manuscripts being submitted for peer review has also greatly increased. Unfortunately, research and publications on COVID-19 has so far often not been of high quality and many unprinted preprints have been rushed to spread without sufficient oversight. The time between submission and publication of articles on COVID-19 has decreased on average by around 50%. This analysis also showed that the time to publication for research not related to COVID-19 has remained unaffected, and that the number of research articles unrelated to COVID-19 has dropped considerably, with COVID-19 predominating in receipt of funding and attention from the research community. Conclusion: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education and scientific research in biomedical sciences are negative. Almost all aspects of medical education were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The negative impact, both on basic education in medicine, and also on the acquisition of practical knowledge within various clinical disciplines, especially surgery, unfortunately continues. There has been no disease in the history of medicine about which several professional and scientific articles have been written in a relatively short time. Research and publications on COVID-19 has often not been of high quality. Research articles from many medical field unrelated to COVID-19 were less published. A pandemic with a "paperdemic" will be even more complicated to manage if it progresses in an uncontrolled manner and is not properly scrutinized.