As many other research projects, the INTENS project has been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic : hospitals and medical staff have been overwhelmed with the COVID-19 patients, while lockdown measures taken by governments sharply halted research activity. After different months, research centres have been able to reopen with massive restrictions: reduced number of staff members allowed accessing the centres, reduced time that researchers can spend in laboratory, facilities still closed or dedicated to COVID-19 projects/clinic-related practices only. Most people in the Consortium are still unable to work at full capacity and large animal experiments are still on hold.

Luckily, the INTENS project has been granted a one-year extension, which means the project will end on the 31st December 2021. The Consortium is confident that the extension will allow researchers to complete this study which we believe has already been very successful.