Ways COVID‐19 may impact unrelated pharmacoepidemiologic research using routinely collected data

I read with interest the review by Pottegård et al1 discussing considerations for pharmacoepidemiologic studies aiming to address the ongoing novel human coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The authors raise a variety of excellent points about how the various data sets we routinely use can help researchers study treatments relevant to the outbreak. With 2020 coming to a close, I feel it is time for pharmacoepidemiologists to address another looming question related to real-world evidence: how can we incorporate routinely collected data from 2020 and 2021 into analyses of safety and efficacy for drugs and medical treatments unrelated to COVID-19?