The need for safe and effective COVID-19 treatments requires the capacity to conduct multinational clinical trials to test and compare existing and new therapies and vaccines. In light of this, the OECD published a Policy Response on 4 August 2020: “Greater harmonisation of clinical trial regulations would help the fight against COVID-19”.
Recommendations for promoting international multi‐site clinical trials—from a viewpoint of ethics review

This paper presents the findings of a survey to understand differences in ethics review systems, and recommends ways to overcome obstacles and facilitate ethical, international, collaborative health research and clinical trials.
This work was led by the CRIGH Research Bioethics project, co-chaired by the Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED), National Cancer Center Japan, and National Institutes of Health.