The recent COVID-19 pandemic triggered a rapid response from the advanced materials industry, and this has led to a number of different developments happening over the last couple of months. While there has not been as much movement in the last few weeks, a lot of groundwork has been put in to ensure that advanced materials have their place in future pandemic responses. Depending on how long this current outbreak goes on, we could also see more advanced material solutions on the frontline of the COVID-19 outbreak, but that’s yet to be seen. Below, we look at a few of the areas which have seen a lot of interest for advanced material usage during the outbreak.

Public Health is in crisis. An outbreak of a novel strain of coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 (citation). This outbreak set in motion a chain of events that has had severe repercussions across the world. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the disease (Covid-19) caused by this new virus (SARS-CoV-2) a global pandemic (citation). The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 brought to light current and long-term failures of public health, culminating in a recurring disaster of epic proportions. These failures have not just been confined to the health front, but they have also affected social and political structures, as most disasters tend to do. #advancedmaterials #ampt

All periods are favorable for innovation, but those when crises are felt are more so because the survival instinct pushes even more to seek solutions: the need to find simple, cheap, effective and intelligent solutions are all the more necessary in these times. For example, wars have always been favorable to innovation. So the current health crisis will be very favorable to innovation in order to be able to bounce back towards new solutions that are more reliable and meet the new needs created by the crisis.