ECCMID 2021 – Registration and Abstract news

Registration for the 31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) will be opening at the end of January 2021. You can view the full schedule of registration fees on the ECCMID Website.

Abstract submission for the 31st ECCMID will open on January 11, 2021 and will remain open until 24 February 2021 at 15:59 CET.

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Applications accepted for Assistant ECCMID Programme Director

Survey: challenges of laboratory services required to support cervical cancer screening programmes

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about multiple complex challenges in 2020 including the provision of laboratory services required to support cervical cancer screening programmes.

The HPV Prevention and Control Board decided to create a short survey, led by Mario Poljak and Kate Cuschieri, to collect contemporary data on the experience of laboratories on how COVID-19 has affected the ability to deliver “routine” services required to support cervical cancer screening.

The survey is intended for heads of laboratories and/or laboratory managers; in this way, we would hope to capture a single response per laboratory. It should take no more than 5 minutes to complete.

We hope the survey will help to both quantify the impact and identify common challenges across laboratories, both existing and anticipated.

We are thankful for your participation: https://uantwerpen.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5iQGkiWi9imMROB

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EMA communication: Information on the first COVID-19 vaccine

EMA is informing about additional data on the first COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty, which has now been published in the EMA website:

• CHMP assessment report, in English
• Translations in all EU languages of the medicine overview
• Translations in all EU languages of the product information
• Full body of the core Risk Management Plan (plus Annex 4), in English

The documents can be accessed by clicking here.

Please check EMA’s dedicated webpage on COVID-19 for the latest updates.

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Joint strategy sets direction for EMA and EU medicines regulatory agencies to 2025

EMA and the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) have published their joint strategy for the next five years, following its recent adoption by the HMA and EMA Management Board.

The strategy details how the European medicines regulatory network can continue to enable the supply of safe and effective medicines that meet patients’ needs in the face of challenges posed by ever-accelerating developments in science, medicine, digital technologies, globalisation as well as emerging health threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The European medicines agencies network strategy to 2025 outlines six priority areas for the network:

• the availability and accessibility of medicines;
• data analytics, digital tools and digital transformation;
• innovation;
• antimicrobial resistance and other emerging health threats;
• supply chain challenges; and
• the sustainability of the network and operational excellence.

The network will review the strategy after 18 months to consider if the goals and objectives remain appropriate, and to adjust them if necessary, in the light of the changing environment and ongoing engagement with stakeholders.

For more details and related content please click here.

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CMI highlight: Better prognosis in females with severe COVID-19 pneumonia: possible role of inflammation as potential mediator

Sex differences in COVID-19 severity and mortality have been described. The authors aimed with this analysis to compare the risk of invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) and mortality by sex and to explore whether variation in specific biomarkers could mediate this difference.

They conducted a retrospective, observational cohort study among patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia. A survival analysis was conducted to compare time to the composite endpoint of IMV or death by sex. Interaction was formally tested to compare the risk difference by sex in subsets. Mediation analysis with a binary endpoint IMV or death (yes/no) by end of follow-up for a number of inflammation/coagulation biomarkers in the context of counterfactual prediction was also conducted.

Their analysis suggests a difference in the risk of COVID-19 clinical progression by sex and provides a hypothesis for potential mechanisms leading to this and highlights the predominant role of CRP to mediate the observed difference by sex.

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