BASES COVID-19 Interest Group

The COVID-19 SIG will provide an active forum for networking, discussion, activities, knowledge sharing and debate among BASES members who share an interest in this area.

The aims of the SIG is to:

• Create a community of practice & knowledge exchange to share best practice.
• Foster open science, data sharing, co-authorship, joint projects & partnership working.
• Propose research priorities to help guide investigators & funders.
• Develop CPD & teaching materials.

Members of the Steering Committee are:

The COVID-19 SIG which was established on 19/05/2020 will:

• Contribute to the continuing professional development of BASES members through webinars, workshops and presentations.
• Submit articles to The Sport and Exercise Scientist facilitating continuing professional development of members and the sharing of professional practice.
• Develop and share knowledge via BASES Expert Statements and BASES Position Stands
• Present sessions at BASES Conferences
• Send e-mails to BASES members who have opted in to receive communications from the SIG
• Develop networks of experts and share ideas and knowledge via social media channels.       

BASES members can opt in to communications from this Special Interest Group via their Member Profile (in the Members' Area) to receive updates and information on how to get more involved. 

One way to get involved is to add to this webpage by making a contribution to the reading list, project and notices section by contacting us at (officemanager@bases.org.uk).

Or email officemanager@bases.org.uk to be added to the group.

Those interested in COVID-19 may find the following material interesting.

If you would like to add a reference to this reading list, please send the details to the BASES Office (officemanager@bases.org.uk)

View our BASES expert statement here

What SIG members are doing

If you want to tell people what research or projects that you are doing this is a place to do it.

Send a short paragraph with a contact email so people can contact you if they want more details to the BASES office (officemanager@bases.org.uk).

• Andy Smith is writing with Barbara Jefferis (UCL) and David Lyreskog (Oxford University) to explore how Geriatric Exercise Science can help people age robustly thereby reducing the incidence of ‘frailty’ and the associated risks from COVID-19. For more information please contact Andy Smith - andysmithpersonal@hotmail.com 
• Colleagues from the University of Northumbria and Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge have recently submitted to Perspectives in Public Health findings from their study titled ‘COVID-19: Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour During the United Kingdom Lockdown.’ A second study is currently underway assessing the impact of the lockdown on physical activity and health in the blind and visually impaired in the UK. This is a collaborative study in conjunction with British Blind Sport. For more details contact Dan Gordon - Dan.Gordon@anglia.ac.uk
  

• Colleagues at the University of Hertfordshire are conducting research titled ‘Physical Activity Habit Formation during COVID-19 Stay-At-Home Restrictions’. In summary this is a longitudinal survey-based study examining how physical activity habits form and change throughout the COVID-19 period and 6 months follow up. For more details contact Lindsay Bottoms - l.bottoms@herts.ac.uk
  

• Colleagues at London South Bank University are involved with a research project entitled “Understanding the barriers and motivation to exercise in older adults before and after the CoV-19 lockdown”. For more details contact Rita Oliveira - r.oliveira@lsbu.ac.uk
  

• At Napier University Mark Ross is working with a group of cardiovascular researchers from the UK and Australia on determining the impact of COVID-19 on the cardiovascular system. This taskforce aims to provide clinicians and healthcare workers with information and reports of the latest information of how COVID-19 affects cardiovascular health and function in patients, being published in peer-review studies (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/coronavirus-literature-review), with the first report published in May (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/lsm/coronavirus/coronavirus-literature-review-task-force/cardiovascular-disease-and-covid-19-may-2020.pdf). For more details contact Mark Ross -M.Ross@napier.ac.uk
• Researchers from the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University are conducting research to explore changes in adults' physical activity during the COVID-19 lockdown. For more information about the study, please contact Dr Nicola Buckland - n.buckland@sheffield.ac.uk.
• Colleagues from the University of Hertfordshire are undertaking a study titled ‘Effect of home confinement and flexible working patterns on physical activity and lifestyle behaviour during the COVID-19 outbreak’ which will look at furloughed employees and working from home to determine if it improves physical activity and eating habits. For more detail contact Lindsy Kass on l.s.kass@herts.ac.uk
• Dr Lindsay Bottoms has been working with Leon Paul a fencing equipment provider to help explore the concentration of gases being breathed in whilst exercising at fencing intensity (~83% heart rate max) wearing either a face mask or a face guard under a fencing mask. The company had been liaising with the International Fencing Federation to look at ways to help get the sport back to action and they were concerned about the high levels of carbon dioxide with a face mask under a fencing mask when exercising at high intensity. So, I (i.e. Lindsay) tested myself at home on the treadmill in fencing kit. I measured oxygen saturation levels, carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations in the fencing mask with a face guard that they created and without and compared this to a traditional cloth face mask. The results highlight the need for further research on the safety of exercise with a facemask. For more details contact l.bottoms@herts.ac.uk
• Dr Fiona Chambers, University College Cork (UCC), will be presenting within the BASES multi-disciplinary webinar series this November, but in the meantime, she is leading this initiative in partnership with UCC Sport, Sport Ireland, the International Sport and Culture Association, the Federation of Irish Sports, the Cork Local Sports Partnership and the National Outdoor Education and Training Centre.
  This FREE competition is for teams worldwide to consider the question:
  How might we sustainably redesign sport and physical activity for children and families, the young and the not-so-young, for participants, spectators, fans and community groups, so that it is inclusive, accessible, attainable – and fun! – during the pandemic and afterwards?
  Registration opens on 19 June 2020. The on-line event will take place during the weekend of 26-28 June. Successful teams’ ideas will be incubated in their organisations. Intellectual Property remains with the teams. A briefing documentcan be found here. Thanks for your consideration of this opportunity.
• Neil Maxwell from the University of Brighton is collaborating with Ana Bonell and Karen Forrest (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and Behzad Nadjm (Medical Research Council, The Gambia) on a project that will evaluate heat alleviation strategies in healthcare workers wearing personal protective equipment in The Gambia. The SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic is accelerating and this respiratory infection is highly contagious. Healthcare workers provide vital care to patients suffering with this infection and must do this whilst wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) to minimise the risk to themselves, their co-workers and their families. PPE is effective at preventing transmission, but it also adds a physical and thermal strain since it interrupts our physiological mechanisms of heat loss. The project is supported by a Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Studentship Grant. For more information please contact Neil Maxwell – n.maxwell@brighton.ac.uk.
• Dr Melitta McNarry and Dr Kelly Mackintosh have been working with Sport Wales to develop the recently inaugurated Welsh Institute of Physical Activity, Health and Sport (WIPAHS), which links Sport Wales and all higher education institutes across Wales. They have appointed a 6-month Research Assistant, Dr James Shelley, to work with WIPAHS and co-ordinate research activity across Wales related to COVID-19 and sport and exercise sciences. They have an academic from each Welsh HEI who is driving this across their institute. For more details contact k.mackintosh@swansea.ac.uk
• Drs McNarry and Mackintosh with Dr James Faulkner from the University of Winchester, who has led a survey across numerous countries, including the home four nations, investigating the impact of lockdown on physical activity and mental health. The second survey will be being released soon. For more details contact Dr James Faulker - James.Faulkner@winchester.ac.uk
• Prof Charlie Foster built on his links with the Chief Medical Officer’s has set up a free checking service to ensure the most accurate information was being disseminated during lockdown (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/research/projects/physical-activity/new-resource/). Dr Kelly Mackintosh was the lead for Wales, with Prof Foster, Prof Mutrie and Prof Murphy leading England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, respectively.
• Dr Kelly Mackintosh was invited to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on Sport at Welsh Parliament (https://business.senedd.wales/ieListDocuments.aspx?MId=6356&EVT=101&DT=M)
• Dr Kelly Mackintosh was invited to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on Physical Activity and Sport on BBC Radio Wales (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000knd2)

This is a space where you can upload details of events (e.g. webinars) that you think members might be interested in. To do so send information to BASES - (officemanager@bases.org.uk).

The Clinical Exercise Physiology Association (CEPA) are hosting a virtual one-day conference on 2 October 2021. The theme of the conference will be the impact of COVID-19 on the practice of clinical exercise physiology (please see attached promo).

August 2022

In September 2021, members of the COVID-19 SIG took part in a debate at the annual BASES conference on whether the lessons from the Pandemic had been learned. Following the debate, in the Winter of 2021, Drs Andy Smith FBASES, Rita de Oliveira, Mark Faghy, Mark Ross and Neil Maxwell FBASES wrote the BASES’ Position Stand on the Ongoing Pandemic. In the Stand, and as communicated to the membership, it was noted that the SIG would become ‘dormant’. That is, it would remain part of the structure of BASES and from time to time will run special projects and be ready to ‘step up’ if needed. All the resources produced by the SIG remain available on the BASES website, under ‘Reading’ and ‘Resources’. Drawing on these resources, the Public and External Affairs Advisory Panel will attempt to submit evidence to the UK Public Inquiry on COVID-19, which the Government has recently established.

February 2021 - click to see update

August 2020

Envisaged following publication of the BASES expert statement on ‘lockdowns’, the COVID-19 SIG was established at the end of May 2020. The SIG aims to i) Create a community of practice & knowledge exchange, ii) foster open science, data sharing, co-authorship & partnership working, iii) propose research priorities and iv) develop CPD & teaching materials. In only four months members have i) uploaded projects and papers onto the webpage, ii) drafted the BASES position stand on ‘reopening’ SES Departments, iii) taken part in an international webinar with the University of Varanasi-India and iv) are currently working together on a paper for TSES. Thanks go to Team BASES, the founding members and the SIG’s Steering Group who made this happen.