JC reports a grant from Pfizer for a randomised controlled trial with a Staphylococcus aureus vaccine versus placebo in vertebral spinal surgery with instrumentation, for which all funds were provided to the University of Calgary, outside this Correspondence and grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research on acute and primary care preparedness for COVID-19 in Alberta, Canada, awarded February, 2020. He serves as chair of the WHO Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Research and Development Expert Group for COVID-19 and the WHO Health Emergencies Programme Ad-hoc COVID-19 IPC Guidance Development Group, both of which provide multidisciplinary advice to WHO and for which no funding is received. He is also a member of the Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group and reports support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to attend an Infection Control Think Tank Meeting in 2019. RC reports grants from WHO, outside this Correspondence. AV and MJS declare no competing interests.