Cochrane Review A122 - Timeline of delays in the production of the 2020 review

Delaying urgent reviews for political reasons

Cochrane Review A122 (Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses) was started in 2006 and updated five times, the latest in January 2023. 

Here, we present the timeline of the Cochrane Central Editorial Unit interventions, which led to a delay of several months in the publication of the 2020 update. 2020 was a crucial time, given the concerns over the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the sudden, unprecedented interest in physical interventions, especially masks.

This post and the following report verifiable facts. The following posts of the series will present considerations and interpretations of what was and is still going on. 

The accompanying editorial and feature notes were not seen by any A122 authors before publication.

In early 2020, there was no more urgent matter than the spread of SARS-CoV-2, as everyone knows. Researchers were frantically publishing studies of variable quality. However, few of them had relevance to policy making. So, any editorial…