The COVID-19 Pandemic: The Impact on Newborn Screening Research, Clinical Care and Public Health

Dear Colleagues, 

Newborn screening, while based upon analytical and physiological tests performed on newborns, also includes a broader system of services that impacts both infants and their families. The system of services involves the public health and health care delivery systems, clinicians and researchers and many nongovernmental entities. The COVID-19 pandemic has both pushed and offered new opportunities for the Newborn Screening system.  For example, the COVID-19 global pandemic has challenged researchers, clinicians, and public health teams everywhere to rethink how day-to-day newborn screening as well as newborn screening research is conducted and what infrastructure needs to be in place to both ensure ongoing delivery of screening services and advance discoveries while engaging researchers and research participants. Precautions against spreading the coronavirus, including physical distancing, and working from home, have transformed the work of public health, clinical, and academic research teams across the country in all research and clinical domains. COVID-19 testing is often performed within the same agency as the laboratory component of NBS and there have been documented shortages of supplies, equipment and personnel.

This Special Issue will be devoted to how the Newborn Screening Community has deployed innovative approaches to continue research and discovery, clinical implementation, and public health practice, including service delivery, during a global pandemic.  Some topics of interest include:

• health inequities within newborn screening programs–an old Concern that may be getting worse
• COVID implications and fetal medicine–implications for newborn screening programs
• using remote technologies and telehealth in the newborn screening system during a pandemic
• modification of continuity of operations plans during a pandemic
• ethical and policy issues for carrier screening–implications for newborn screening programs
• conducting newborn screening pilots during a pandemic
• using a consortium to structure and conduct a pilot, including policy issues to consider
• screening for X-linked disorders
• emerging models of data collection and sharing due to COVID-19 vaccination
• research and drug development funding and prioritization During a pandemic

This special issue will be helpful to many programmes reviewing their response to the epidemic and putting policies and procedures in place for dealing with the next one. To facilitate this and enable comparisons between country or state program responses, please ensure that the following information is included in your introduction:

• geographic area covered
• number of births screened annually
• physical location of the newborn screening laboratory (stand-alone, in-public health laboratory, in-hospital laboratory) i.e., how procedures were impacted by a general laboratory decision rather than a specific newborn screening decision.
• summary [brief] of covid status over time in the geographic area
• description of newborn screening pilots of candidate conditions during a pandemic
• summary [brief] of government responses to covid status over time

And whatever the focus of your paper, if all aspects of the screening pathway aren’t covered, please briefly mention them i.e., specimen collection, transport, lab testing, follow-up, and diagnosis.

Dr. Michele A. Lloyd-Puryear
Dr. Amy Brower
Dr. Amy Gaviglio
Dr. Susan A. Berry
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Neonatal Screening is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• newborn screening
• COVID-19
• pandemic
• carriers and X-linked disorders