LAUSR

Editorial On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic [1]. The disease is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which rapidly overwhelmed the entire world. The virus was first described in China in December 2019, in early January it was already characterized, and already on January 30, 2020, the outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, which later evolved into a pandemic [1]. Devastating and unpredictable spread of COVID-19 throughout the world has caused unprecedented global lockdowns and immense burden for healthcare systems. The WHO called for immediate research actions including “immediately assess available data to learn what standard of care approaches are the most effective” and “evaluate as fast as possible the effect of adjunctive and supportive therapies” [1]. This pandemic is now an enormous challenge for researchers, clinicians, health-care workers, epidemiologists and decision-makers. BMC Medical Research Methodology would like to contribute to this global endeavour by setting up a collection of articles called “Methodologies for COVID-19 research and data analysis”. As Guest Editors of the Collection, we would like to offer our views regarding methodological challenges where researchers can help.