Science policy advising in times of a pandemic

by Anna Ingwersen & Samira Amos

The beginning of a crisis

100’000’000’000’000 - that's the number of viruses on and inside each person. This number shows that viruses are everywhere, with some promoting health and others causing disease. So you might think that the SARS-CoV-19 virus is nothing out of the ordinary, just one out of a great number of many other viruses. Yet, for over a year, it has brought the world to a standstill. What makes the virus so special?

This question can be answered by looking at the mortality rate of the infection (how deadly is it?) and the basic reproductive number of the virus (how fast is it transmitted?). The virus has a higher age-related mortality than, for example, the seasonal influenza, and is also more transmissible. The evolution of the virus during the pandemic has made it both more transmissible and more deadly. Thus, the virus is special because of (1) its rapid transmission, which can also be asymp-tomatic, (2) its higher severity than seasonal influenza, and (3) the fact that the global community had no initial immunity to the virus. These characteristics risked overwhelming the healthcare system.

Mid-March 2020, the situation in Switzerland was doing exactly that. Ad hoc, it was the goal at ETH to pool the resources and expertise to support the Swiss government in its response to the pandemic. Therefore, an ETH Covid 19 Task Force was founded on March 18th 2020, which was carried by the ETH board. Soon, it became clear that the pandemic touches upon every aspect of society and economy. Thus, the Task Force was expanded to be Swiss wide and interdisciplinary. The Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force was founded, including 10 expert groups and more than 70 scientists from over 12 scientific fields. All of these scientists offered their expertise voluntarily and without remuneration. In its 1st phase, the Task force developed 30 policy briefs and was then, in its 2nd phase, given a mandate by the government under the lead of our speaker, Prof. Dr. Martin Ackermann. This 2nd phase was characterized by close exchange with the BAG and the GS-EDI, access to more data and participation in the point de press, making the Task Force much more exposed. Ackermann dropped the lead on the 12th of August 2021, succeeded by Prof. Dr. Tanja Stadler. This marks the 3rd phase of the Task Force, which will end when the Task Force becomes obsolete.

Challenges at the interface of Science and Policy

Such a close collaboration between science and authorities in the face of a pandemic was never seen before. For this reason, the work of the COVID-19 task force faced several challenges. One of the challenges was that the dialogue between the scientific task force and the authorities was initially difficult. As Ackermann emphasized, it was very important to be able to express ideas that were at an early stage and should be treated confidentially. Central to this constructive atmos-phere was - as is so often the case - trust. Particularly insightful was the comment that politicians are used to exchanging ideas with lobbying groups that pursue specific interests. Mutual under-standing and the definition of clear roles was therefore very important: science does not pursue its own interests, but provides important information that should feed into the political decision-making process and inform the public so that it can play its role in democracy.

Other challenges included the independent communication of the task force to the outside world and the communication of its experts as individuals. In both cases, this independent communica-tion was important to create transparency and make the scientific assessment publicly available. However, contradictions or unclear statements could be confusing, so coordinated internal and external communication was needed.

The main aspects that challenged the collaboration between Task Force and the governments were masks, economic perspective, the second wave, the development of variants of the virus and the question of when the pandemic will finally come to an end. All of these aspects depended strongly on close communication between the scientists and the government. It took time, pa-tience and trial and error to develop a level of trust between the different actors and with that, a more efficient and effective way of communication.

What do we take from it?

The colloquium concluded with a very interesting discussion and the audience almost forgot about their hungry stomachs and lunch break. The key takeaways from the presentation were that trust, mutual understanding, and clear roles are central to successful communication be-tween science and government. Further strengthening institutional trust, defining structures, roles and processes for scientific advisory groups and training a new generation of scientists, pol-iticians and administration will be important for future dialogues. Looking ahead, it is unclear what collaboration between the two sides will look like, once this health crisis is over. However, it came up in the discussion that building on what has been learned may well be important in light of other crises that already exist - such as climate change.

We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Martin Ackermann for his insightful presentation.