WHO Research and Development Blueprint Scientific Advisory Group that met on March 2, 2020, in Geneva, Switzerland, to prioritise the recommendations of an earlier meeting on COVID-19 research held in early February, 2020. 3 In this Comment, we outline STAG-IH’s understanding of control activities with the group’s risk assessment and recommendations. To respond to COVID-19, many countries are using a combination of containment and mitigation activities with the intention of delaying major surges of patients and levelling the demand for hospital beds, while protecting the most vulnerable from infection, including elderly people and those with comorbidities. Activities to accomplish these goals vary and are based on national risk assessments that many times include estimated numbers of patients requiring hospitalisation and availability of hospital beds and ventilation support. Most national response strategies include varying levels of contact tracing and self-isolation or quarantine; promotion of public health measures, including handwashing, respiratory etiquette, and social distancing; preparation of health systems for a surge of severely ill patients who require isolation, oxygen, and mechanical ventilation; strengthening health facility infection prevention and control, with special attention to nursing home facilities; and postponement or cancellation of large-scale public gatherings.

Some lower-income and middle-income countries require technical and financial support to successfully respond to COVID-19, and many African, Asian, and Latin American nations are rapidly developing the capacity for PCR testing for COVID-19. Based on more than 500 genetic sequences submitted to GISAID (the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data), the virus has not drifted to significant strain difference and changes in sequence are minimal. There is no evidence to link sequence information with transmissibility or virulence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), 1 the virus that causes COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2, like other emerging high-threat pathogens, has infected health-care workers in China4, 5 and several other countries. To date, however, in China, where infection prevention and control was taken seriously, nosocomial transmission has not been a major amplifier of transmission in this epidemic. Epidemiological records in China suggest that up to 85% of human-to-human transmission has occurred in