Prioritization of health emergency research and disaster preparedness: a systematic assessment of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

The spontaneous nature of health emergencies and disasters (HED) require research prioritization and preparedness from multidisciplinary sectors such as the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that has become a center of attention to the research community globally. This study aims at assessing global research evolution, precedence, and preparedness toward combating the COVID-19 pandemic via systematic analysis of published studies. We retrieved COVID-19 studies from Scopus and Web of Science databases from January 01, 2020, to March 23, 2020, according to the PRISMA guidelines using the search term “COVID-19 OR coronavir∗”. The dataset was analyzed for productivity indices, conceptual frameworks (CFs), discipline, and collaboration networks (CNs). Results revealed a total of 817 studies on COVID-19. The top two productive researchers include those by Wang Y. (3.55%) and Li Y. (2.94%). Among disciplines, virology (n = 40, 5 h-index), microbiology (n = 27, 2 h-index), immunology (n = 22), and infectious diseases (n = 21) were at the forefront. China (n = 181) and the United States (n = 69) ranked the first and second productive nations, respectively. Country CNs in COVID-19 can be clustered into four subnetworks. Also, four thematic areas evolved in COVID-19 research for the period, namely, epidemiologic studies of infectious bronchitis virus including coronavirus, elucidation of historical respiratory viral outbreaks, zoonoses and phylogenetic analysis, and influenza zoonosis; while the prevailing CFs of research prioritization ranged from comparative symptomatology of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2 and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), perceptivity studies from SARS-CoV-1,2 outbreaks, antigenic structural studies for vaccine production to antibody therapeutic target studies. In conclusion, the COVID-19 research has received progressive attention since the beginning of the pandemic; however, this study recommends that integrative and multidisciplinary research priority and preparation should be channelled toward HED from all experimental and nonexperimental biases of knowledge.