Physiology and the COVID-19 response

When COVID-19 patients started appearing in emergency departments, they didn’t respond to standard treatment regimes. As such, healthcare professionals, and medicine as a whole, had to go back to first principles and understand systems physiology at work.

While initially COVID-19 was viewed as primarily a respiratory illness, we now know that this is only one facet of the disease, in addition to conditions such as thrombosis and the cytokine storm. Our improved understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on our bodies has enabled clinicians to change their approach to treatment, such as no   longer rushing to put patients on ventilators and instead placing patients in the prone position to improve gas exchange.

Our report Physiology and the COVID-19 response, outlines areas in which physiology has made a significant contribution to the acute and chronic phases of the pandemic:

• Saving lives when confronted with a novel virus
• Supporting older people to remain healthy during lockdown
• Developing safe and effective vaccines
• Tackling the emerging long COVID public health crisis

Report launch

This report was launched at the 2021 Conservative Party conference in Manchester with a panel that included the Science Minister, George Freeman MP, Professor Mike Tipton from The Physiological Society, Susan Mitchell from Alzheimer’s Research UK and Richard Maugham from Pfizer.