“In my application, should I explain our lab’s contingency plans for the COVID-19 pandemic?”

No. Write your application without including contingency or recovery plans for problems resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Peer reviewers will assume that constraints arising from the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., lab occupancy restrictions, declines in patient accrual) will be resolved during the project period. Your score will not be affected.

In the personal statement of your Biosketch, you may address effects due to the pandemic on past productivity or other scoreable issues. Reviewers will be instructed to take these pandemic-related circumstances into account when assessing your productivity and other score-driving factors.