In the emergency call HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CORONA-01-01, COVend was one of the six funded projects, from a total of 36 submissions. 17 partners from 13 different countries make up COVend consortium. The other projects funded by this call are ECRAID-PRIME (4 partner), XVR011 Phase 2 (5 partners), RBDCOV (13 partners), EPIC-CROWN-2 (5 partners), and iMPact (4 partners).

On 7 April 2021, the European Commission launched an emergency request for expressions of interest for EU-funded research and innovation actions to fight the coronavirus. It was the first under Horizon Europe.

On 22 July 2021, just over a week before COVend started, the EC announced that eleven projects were short-listed for funding, with total funding of €120 million. Those eleven projects involve 312 research teams from 40 countries in Europe and beyond, which are addressing the four topics of the emergency request for expressions of interest:

• Clinical trials for therapeutics and vaccines to boost COVID-19 prevention and treatment and further inform public health policy and clinical management.
• Cohorts united against COVID-19 variants of concern supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to the development of large scale, COVID-19 cohorts and networks worldwide, including beyond Europe’s borders, forging links with European initiatives as a global response to the pandemic.
• FAIR and open data sharing in support to European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, to further develop and integrate platforms for the sharing of relevant research resources
• Research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19 and other infectious disease epidemics, to set up and provide access to a comprehensive portfolio of relevant services