ESCAIDE 2021 – a summary of Day 4

The last day of ESCAIDE 2021 commenced with the Eurosurveillance Seminar, organized as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the journal. The seminar focused on examples of the interplay between generating hypotheses from observation, researching associated virological and immunological mechanisms, and translating the knowledge gained into public health interventions. The three cutting edge papers presented covered influenza, measles and COVID-19 respectively, through a mix of epidemiological, virological/immunological and public health policy perspectives. Intense debates and a flurry of questions came from the comments section for each of the three papers, as the novel insights being presented on infectious disease epidemics are directly relevant to the reality that we are all currently living with.

“The strong and growing network of contributors not only from across Europe, but really beyond, has been and hopefully will remain a strength of the journal.” – Andrea Ammon, ECDC Director, on the 25th anniversary of Eurosurveillance

Today we heard some of the latest research in the field in a session of late-breaker abstracts on public health surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic, which included a study that showed that children aged 5-18 in the Netherlands reported persistent systems from COVID-19, even after mild infections, that had an impact on their everyday life and school attendance.

Further sessions on COVID-19 covered vaccines and surveillance – findings have shown that the surveillance data quality and notification timeliness has varied between regions, making definite conclusions on COVID-19 data difficult. Speakers highlighted the need to determine the aims of vaccination strategies: preventing infection or reducing deaths?

ESCAIDE 2021 was brought to a close by ECDC Director Andrea Ammon, with a celebration of the success of the conference – with over 3000 registrations, 120 sessions, 160 speakers and 2300 comments, questions and messages sent. It has been a pleasure to meet virtually and we offer our thanks to all speakers, presenters, and participants for their contributions to the event. See you again in 2022!