f we are to return to our normal lives, we need answers to many questions and they will only be delivered by science and medicine and their applications. In fact, the speed with which the virus has spread around the globe has been matched by the speed with which many scientists have mobilised themselves to take on this pandemic. The British science community has responded rapidly. The government’s funding agency, UK Research and Innovation-Medical Research Council (UKRI-MRC), has created new funding schemes, the Wellcome Trust has partnered with the Gates Foundation to speed up research and Cancer Research UK is supporting work into how Covid-19 is disrupting cancer treatment. In the last weeks, Oxford University and Imperial College London have reported on their plans for new vaccines and on more modelling of the impact of the virus. Companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Sanofi have put competition behind them and are working closer together to develop drugs and new vaccines. “Mega-labs” have been set up to undertake virus testing, supported by “small-boat” laboratories in research institutes and commercial testing facilities. Suddenly, science is being done differently. Scientists have made dramatic shifts in their research, often without the funding in place to support these new directions. Results are shared rapidly, with papers in research journals being published in days and weeks rather than months and years, and through informal channels not always peer reviewed, like the popular press and social media. Barriers have been broken down between different areas of science, blurring the boundaries between disciplines and the conventional separation of basic discovery research from research aimed at developing useful applications. The breakdown in barriers is very obvious at the Francis Crick Institute in central London, where I work. The institute was set up deliberately mixing research groups of all types together. Basic research biologists are cheek by jowl with clinical researchers and with translational scientists who work closely with industry. So when Covid-19 hit the UK it was easy for these scientists to shift from their established programmes to work together on the virus. They brought different skills and expertise to the endeavour, stimulating each other, driving new ideas, thinking “out of the box”. In less than three weeks, with no government support, working in close collaboration with UCL Hospitals Foundation Trust and the diagnostic company Health Services Laboratories, an accredited virus testing facility was put in place, testing NHS frontline workers and providing a new team that can help research into the virus. Being locally organised, the team was well placed to solve problems in all parts of the virus testing workflow, from sample collection to laboratory analysis, and to returning the information back to hospitals within 24 hours. This helps to keep patients and healthcare workers safe by tracing those who are infected, assisting hospitals to run securely and maintaining the trust of patients who are avoiding hospitals because they are worried about infection. These experiences gained locally will help the mega testing labs get their workflows operating effectively. The mega labs will encounter similar difficulties to those the Crick has faced, including issues that have arisen due to NHS guidelines that prevented frontline care workers being routinely tested when they do not have symptoms but may still be infectious. Problems such as these have contributed to the challenges of getting to the government’s target of 100,000 tests a day. A number of Covid-related research projects have also rapidly sprung up at the Crick. These include how the virus replicates in human cells, why for some people the disease is mild and for others it is deadly, how the virus gets into cells and is transferred from animals to humans, what happens to the human immune system after viral infection and how the treatment of cancer patients is affected by the virus. The projects addressing these questions range across scientific disciplines and ways of working and involve a wide spectrum of expertise from fundamental researchers to frontline healthcare workers. Science is crucial to developing sound public policy to manage the pandemic, but it is important to recognise that at this stage scientific knowledge of the virus is still tentative. Scientists can only give the best advice available at the time, but some of that advice will turn out to be incorrect. It is only through sustained quality research that clarity will emerge and advice will become increasingly reliable and that will take time. There has also been a sea change in the relationship between politicians and scientists. This is important because as well as high-quality scientists, we need high-quality political leadership to guide us through this pandemic. The political populists, so vocal at the election and before, have gone strangely silent. We are not hearing experts being scoffed at or simplistic soundbites such as “get Covid done”. These may win elections but if there is nothing beneath them they are useless to deal with complex political issues such as the present crisis. Perhaps this pandemic will lead to a more mature relationship between politicians and experts, which will help strengthen our country’s leadership at a time when we need it most. Maybe dealing with the current crisis will not only get rid of the coronavirus but also the virus of unsubstantiated populism. • Sir Paul Nurse is chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute and 2001 Nobel laureate, physiology or medicine