“Long COVID-19” of Researchers: What to Do Next?

Stephen Hibbs: Welcome to this episode of the HemaSphere podcast. My name is Stephen Hibbs and I am a hematologist and clinical research fellow based at the Queen Mary University of London; and I am one of the scientific editors for HemaSphere.

Now it's almost too obvious to say, but COVID has changed (and often dominated) the research landscape over the last three years; including in hematology. Researchers have made progress in understanding how blood changes its behaviour as a result of COVID, how patients with hematological conditions are best treated for Covid and how our services should change as a result of the pandemic.

So COVID has changed the academic focus of many researchers, but it's also changed their jobs and lived experiences of what it's like to do research. Today I'm joined by two researchers who have worked on this question; by surveying the pandemic experience of laboratory and clinical scientists across the Young EHA network.

They published their findings in Hemasphere last year, in the aptly named "Long-COVID of Researchers: What to Do Next?"

So welcome, Eleni and Alba. Can I ask you to introduce yourselves and to describe how your own research journeys led to your involvement in this work?

Eleni Gavriilaki: Hi. Thank you for this warm welcome. I'm Eleni Gavriilaki, from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. I am a part of the Young EHA Committee. I'm very proud to be part of this young committee and to have created this work through this committee. We can discuss further on this work in a little bit.

Alba Maiquez-Diaz: Hi, yes. Very nice - and thanks a lot for the invitation to discuss this work. So my name is Alba Maiquez-Diaz. I'm based in Barcelona, in Spain. I'm a postdoctoral scientist, working in chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Yeah, as Eleni said, so this all started from the Young EHA Committee, and that's how we ended up publishing this. And actually, there was that previous publication that we already did; because we did two surveys, actually three surveys, to kind of understand the impact the pandemic was having (and is currently still having) on the young generation of researchers and clinicians.

And I guess we can go through these through this podcast - because I think it is an important topic that we need to raise and discuss and to think what to do with.

Stephen Hibbs: Thank you both. So, can I ask you a bit about: How has the COVID pandemic affected your life as researchers, both [kind of] at the time of the peak pandemic and ever since?

Alba Maiquez-Diaz: So for me, it was an important hit because I'd just moved from Manchester a year before the pandemic. So I was doing a postdoc in Manchester, and then I moved. I got another position here in Barcelona.

So it was by the time, [the lab running] -- I mean, everything running in the lab after the one year it takes to start things and to set up all the experiments in the lab and everything.

So we were just like "Okay. We have things running. We can start" - and then... we stopped. Right? And we had to close down the cell lines or the patient samples and go back home.

And in Spain, I work at a hospital. So only people doing COVID-related research could go to work. So we kind of stayed for about two or three months - and then it was slowly going back to the lab. So it actually took me about a year to fully go back to what I was doing in March at that time... yeah.

Stephen Hibbs: And when you did return, what was different?

Alba Maiquez-Diaz: So, well... [it is different that] -- In my group, many people worked from home. There was a lot of computational biology going on in the department. So there were fewer people there. So as a group, it has taken us a while to kind of "feel" again that we were a group and we're getting together now and starting to feel normality now.

We have to make -- We didn't have to do shifts, because there were not many people working in the lab, but we were a few people there. So it felt a little bit lonely [still].

And then obviously, we have grants that are finishing now - three years after they started - and there's no communication yet because there's been a gap, that has been a long time to recover. And even though we got some extension, this is still an impact that -- Well, I haven't got my publication and I need to go to the next round of grant writing - and that's challenging.

Stephen Hibbs: So just picking up on one of the points there of this sort of, getting back towards normality... I was interested to see in your survey; the Table 1 that kind of summarised a lot of the concerns and the hoped-for support that people reported during the pandemic.

I noticed that there was this, kind of, sense in which people missed what you summarised as "casual chats with peers". And there was a bit more, I guess, suspicion of the idea of these organised "support meetings". And I just wanted to ask you a bit more of your own experience of that.

What did these [sort of] "support" meetings feel like... either for you or for your respondents? Did they feel meaningful, or did they feel more of a kind of "token" gesture at that time?

Eleni Gavriilaki: That's a really interesting question, actually. We wanted, through the survey, to give all the scientists and haematologists and researchers the opportunity to express themselves through open questions. Through these questions, we had very interesting answers and some things that we would never actually think.

So even if you work, I think, in a smaller or a larger institute, these informal questions and answers with fellows and other scientists (and even esteemed scientists in their field) might give you very important hints for your next experiment; as we have all experienced or know an idea for another drug or something like that.

I think that was what people were trying to express - and that was what Alba already told us about how we felt lonely in the lab without other people. So for a very small thing like, you know... "What would you suggest [to do?]", but in this experiment, you know? That can be an idea from a technician or a very important thing that can buy an idea from an esteemed professor.

I think working together with people gives you this unique opportunity. And this is -- I think the problem is even larger in early career researchers and researchers that are from countries that do not have such a network of researchers, scientists or haematologists to work with.

We are trying to represent all of these categories and raise their voice; and trying to be optimistic and find new things that can be done in the future.

Alba Maiquez-Diaz: Yes. If I might add on that, with Eleni... So one of the main things we found - and actually, I think that's part of the Young EHA Committee - [is that] this network you have. So actually, this idea of the service started -- We did a call within the committee, during the pandemic, when some --

-- Like the southern European countries, we were already locked down, and the northern European countries were not yet. And we were discussing and we were like "Oh... What's going to happen?"

And there was this idea of this stress and anxiety - we were suffering - and how we could help from the committee, you know? To the researchers and clinicians that were feeling the same. That's where it started. Through the survey... Can we assess [what's] the impact? Can we suggest or push those changes that are needed, or support that is needed, for the younger generations?

And for me, that represents these informal meetings and this fact that, as junior members, you don't need to wait to enrol into a mentoring program that is within your institution; that is already there. That is, the group is there - and you should and you will benefit, but you could also do your own network and your own support group.

And for me, this is key. And for me, this is one of the key messages both from the surveys and from both the articles we published. That is, just look for what you need and what [thing] you need in science... And what COVID has shown us, is that if you do [network], science goes faster and is better, because you interchange support... As Eleni would say, ideas and research and so on.

And to give you all a personal example: Actually, with a group of friends also during COVID and just afterward, we had a chat. A Whatsapp chat, with my friends from the PhD, from Madrid - and we are all over the place. There's some in the States. Some in London. Some in Belgium.

And we, at some point during COVID, we said "Why don't we start doing this regularly? Why don't we meet regularly (and do such a "support me" peer group)? And we started - and now it's been a year and we meet every month; and we discuss, apart from chatting in Whatsapp, what do we -- Whatever we want about our lives.

We have formal structural meetings to support with peers. There are some that are already group leader. There are some that were still senior postdocs. And that's instrumental for all of us, to continue and to feel supported, to feel "what to do next?

and how to handle difficult situations (with or without COVID). But I think that's one of the things that COVID has given us. We can do online peer support meetings with people and we can build them easily. You don't need to do something very complicated.

And for me, that's one of the main messages from this article, yeah.

Stephen Hibbs: So on that point of the messages that you want heard from this... I guess there's this sort of grassroots thing, like what you're talking about there. That some researchers will be able to be in a position where they can sort of put together their own peer group... And I guess I'm aware that other people might be feeling so defeated and so isolated and so lonely that even that kind of feels a bit tricky to do.

I'm interested to know what you think the message is to institutions and to kind of big organizations like EHA about, I guess particularly, those who are kind of the most vulnerable and the most isolated in times like during a pandemic.

What do you think are the messages to them about what really effective and meaningful support can look like?

Alba Maiques-Diaz: Yeah. I guess doing things like EHA did with saying "Okay. This is an interesting topic. Let's listen to the young people." They supported as the committee. We did a couple of webinars that they cover -- I mean, there was like, [very supportive] in saying "Let's listen to what the younger generations said and need". I think, for me, that was one --

And it is about having more grants obviously, but there's always an issue with the money. But it's also with building structures that allow the younger generation to do [network], within themselves and within your clinician or researchers.

Eleni, I don't know if you have other --

Eleni Gavriilaki: Yes, of course. I think another important method that we'll need to discuss is the action for reduced bureaucracy... and this is referring not only to EHA and other associations, but also, you know, to government parties and everyone. And I think this also refers to physicians themselves.

So we need to help the organizations and the funding parties and everyone to reduce bureaucracy - and that was a main message from both surveys, and that is needed in order to not only increase funding but also to give better opportunities for early career researchers that do not have this structure to face bureaucracy.

And I think there are already steps taken by EHA in order to reduce bureaucracy. This was the voice of our surveys, of both surveys, and this was covered by the majority (I think) of the responders.

Stephen Hibbs: So you've both thought a lot about this question of what the pandemic experience has been like, is like, for young hematology researchers across Europe. I'm interested to know... At this point, kind of looking back at the work you've done, what's the missing pieces? What's the gaps? What do you wish you did know, either that you'd asked in the survey, or that you'd have to use other methods to find out?

What do you feel like -- Actually we're not really sure what this part of the experience was like or what these people think. Yeah... Can you speak to that of anything else that you want to find out?

Alba Maiques-Diaz: Well, I guess there was many things... because we were kind of naive when we started - and we had like, never done something like this! So I guess one thing, first of all, would be to have more answers, so we could better group the data and all. And say, for instance, we don't have much answers from eastern European countries, which is a completely different, you know? Probably. And we couldn't really compare between European countries to see what the differences were in that sense. That would be one.

The other one would be... We didn't have enough samples (also) to compare between genders; which was another idea, right? Whether they will be more effective.... What gender? Like female researchers versus male clinicians and researchers. We couldn't do that - and that would have been interesting. And there were other people doing that as well. There were other articles that were covering that.

So I guess, yeah. We didn't see many differences. So we have basically junior or younger early career clinicians and scientists answering, so we couldn't really compare. So we didn't see a difference between first and postdoc and young PIs; and probably that's fair, because it's not that -- I mean it is entirely different, but you are kind of in a phase where you need data you need to process, right?

But something -- We see that people that were more established, for instance... you could do computer work. You could write articles. You could do things during the pandemic, or even afterwards. Even because -- You already have a trajectory... where the more younger generation did not, right? So they were more like, "If I don't do experiments, there's nothing and I can do" and they were suffering more [bad].

But we didn't have enough data for more senior people to kind of compare if there was really a significant difference on the impact; which you would predict... but, yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Hibbs: Thank you. So... final question! Let's say - and you know, this is a horrible thing to think about - but imagine in five or ten years we've got another awful pandemic coming at us down the road.

What would be the number one thing, the most important thing we could do as a research community now to get ready for supporting our researchers, particularly young researchers, through that "made up" coming pandemic?

Eleni Gavriilaki: I think that COVID has given us many tools, you know, to try to fight another pandemic. But I think we will never be prepared for something like that to happen again! Nevertheless, one of the most important things is to have this different sense of immediate action, that needs to be taken in all fields.

So not only in the medical field, in the research field and in the research bodies and the founding bodies... and these supporting mechanisms for all these fields, so that we can work together to fight it's pandemic, or it's threat, or everything.

So I think the most important lesson from COVID is that we have work quickly and we have to work together. That needs to have a trigger... so that people will, you know, get out of their routine and work in this field.

In my very personal point of view, I don't think we will ever be prepared, but we will have the feeling and try to look back at the positive things that were done through COVID.

Alba Maiques-Diaz: Yeah,exactly. I was going to say that; maintaining the networks, to be able -- Because I think that was the key lesson or one of the key lessons, right? That if we are connected within the world of clinicians and scientists - and we share information and data quickly - then we can cope with these critical situations.

If we are isolated - and not even within groups, but even within countries - then -- And that was something we didn't do, right? At the beginning of the COVID. It was more like, "Oh, something is not going to happen to us. So, who cares?". Now probably, we're more smart in that sense to say like, "It might happen. So let's exchange information".

And I think - and that was actually one of the things that came up - we did a seminar in the Annual Conference of EHA last year (discussing this actually) and we invited a couple of more senior and more early career clinicians and scientists to discuss what was kind of the positives. You know there's going to be some positive take-home message from these last years.

And that was one of the things -- The research and clinical network that has been built, that are new and are allowing to speed up research in many other diseases (not only COVID). And you can see that - and you can see how these structures are being now and you can see them in grants now; that people ask for grants that are from things that were built through COVID - and they want to maintain that and use it for a different disease... which is very interesting across disciplines, right? That we were not maybe connecting different medical disciplines and now they are interconnected and they work together.

So I think we need to maintain that... for any reason, but especially if there will be the -- Hopefully not the situation that we have another pandemic, that would speed up the response.

Stephen Hibbs: Brilliant. Thank you so much Eleni, and thank you so much Alba, both for the work you've done and for sharing with us today on the HemaSphere podcast. And thank you to all of our listeners for listening in today.

Alba Maiques-Diaz: Thank you.

Elena Gavriilaki: Thank you.