Covid-19 has been presenting challenges in all areas. Academia has been responding to these challenges with great emphasis. Many studies have been proposed, various groups and research networks have been formed — engineers, doctors, nurses, social scientists, law professionals, among others have been responding to these challenges. They concern the search for answers to questions such as: what is the economic and social impact of the pandemic? How to design and build a simple and low-cost ventilator? Or how to quickly produce masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) needed to face the epidemic amidst resource scarcity and a commercial conflict on a global scale? How to quickly and efficiently carry out tests in order to find out if the new product is contaminated? Or which are the effective therapeutic options? These issues are all part of studies that at some point will involve humans. It is exactly at this moment that researchers ask how to speed up the ethical evaluation process, especially when there are researchers from areas that traditionally do not submit their research projects to the evaluation of independent committees.
