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Background/purpose – The COVID-19 pandemic plagued economies and education at all levels and on a global scale. However, there has been limited research on the impact of the pandemic on academic laboratories. This brief review expounds the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic laboratories by discussing their roles and responses on different continents during the peak of the crisis and since. The study also relates the pandemic’s impact on academic laboratories to existing theories of science education and suggests recommendations for future practices. Materials/methods – This review employed the PRISMA item checklist and Arksey and O’Malley’s framework, with minor adjustments applied to best suit the aims of this review. Information was obtained from the PubMed® and JSTOR bibliographic databases, plus via the Google Scholar academic search engine.   Results – The study demonstrated how most academic laboratories in developed countries responded rapidly to the pandemic; whereas, most African academic laboratories were unproductive due to emergent challenges faced such as inadequate funding for virtual laboratories and e-learning infrastructure, Internet instability, and other issues related to technology and its wider accessibility. The study highlighted how some existing theories of science education were affected by the pandemic, followed by what academic laboratories should have done differently. Conclusion – This review clarified some of the expedient responses needed for academic laboratories to be productive during crises such as a pandemic. The study revealed that embracing certain suggested recommendations could help build more resilient academic laboratories globally, and help to sustain laboratory practices and operations whilst championing quality education.

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