This led to the launch of ECRAID-Prime in December 2021. In May 2021, Alike received a call from Herman Goossens, who she works closely with on many EU-funded projects. The goal to optimise healthcare delivery and accelerate the introduction of new treatment and diagnostic solutions. The network will continue to expand and professionalize its clinical research capabilities within Ecraid. Today, Europe’s primary care research network encompasses more than 300 general practices in 18 European countries. More than 10 years ago, she began developing a primary care research network as part of the EU-funded PREPARE and VALUE-Dx projects, which included treatment and diagnostic clinical trials for outpatients with respiratory infections. Within the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 450 million cases were reported globally, of which over 100 million were in Europe.* Evaluating early treatments of COVID-19 in the communityĪlike works at UMCU’s Julius Centre for Health Sciences and Primary Care and her research focusses on respiratory infection and the appropriateness of prescribing medication in primary care. Could you please hang the Christmas star up again? The world needs some hope to fight this pandemic.’ At that point, it really struck me that others had very different emotions, and the magnitude of this fear was real.”

We were watching the news on TV when she turned to me and whispered, ‘Mum, I’m frightened.

She recalls, “It struck me one evening when I was at home with my daughter. Until then, Alike who is an Assistant Professor at the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) in the Netherlands, was still hopeful and confident that “we as a country, government, hospitals and medical science, would be able to manage this outbreak”. For Alike van der Velden, it was sometime at the end of January 2020, when the first confirmed cases were emerging outside of China.

Though many of us can vividly recall our pandemic memories, our “how we first knew” moments are hazier. When the novel coronavirus epidemic first broke in Wuhan, China and spread globally, the world was thrown into disarray as sickness, rising death tolls and lockdown restrictions permeated our daily lives.

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