National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce

In early 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian Living Evidence Consortium and Cochrane Australia created the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce to deliver living Australian Guidelines for the Clinical Care of People with COVID-19. As the pandemic continued, the Taskforce established its own governance structure and funding model and in 2021 the Taskforce became the 13th member of the Consortium.

The Taskforce brings together 34 peak health professional bodies across Australia whose members are providing clinical care to people with COVID-19.

The living Australian Guidelines for the Clinical Care of People with COVID-19 have been continually updated with new research to give reliable, up-to-date advice to clinicians providing frontline care in this unprecedented global health crisis. 

Each week the Taskforce team identify, evaluate and synthesise evidence to be used as the basis of new recommendations. The team also identify and include any new research evidence that might influence existing recommendations. Panels of clinical experts meet to review the evidence and make new and updated recommendations, which are endorsed by the Taskforce members and immediately published online.

The Taskforce COVID guidelines follow international standards for evidence-based guidelines, using GRADE methods, and updates are approved by the National Health and Medical Research Council. 

Global recognition of Australia’s COVID-19 living guidelines has led to similar initiatives being established internationally. The Taskforce provided substantial support to the UK National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to establish its own COVID-19 living guidelines in April 2021, based on the Australian model and sharing systematic review evidence profiles, methods and processes. 

In the first two years of the Taskforce, the guidelines have been updated nearly 100 times and have grown to include more than 170 recommendations for care of people with COVID in Australia. They cover the entire spectrum of disease, including long COVID, and address special populations including children and adolescents; pregnant and breastfeeding women; and care of older people. They are widely accessed, with over 500,000 users and more than 1 million page views, and have become the nationally accepted source of guidance care for people with COVID in Australia.