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Our work in 2020 /

Prevention and Control

In terms of prevention and control, 2020 was entirely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Supporting the EU COVID-19 response became the dominant activity of the Agency. At the same time, ECDC provided high quality, up to date, and consolidated evidence to Member States and the Commission through planned outputs, or in response to stakeholders’ requests. Overall, the rapid scientific advice to the European Commission and to Member States reached a level never experienced before, with more than 250 requests addressed. The agency’s acting as a reliable provider of data, risk assessments and options for actions has been widely acknowledged. The Centre assisted the European Commission and Member States with laboratory related support and expanded testing contributed to strengthening Member States preparedness by establishing operational indicators and supported the assessment of health services surge capacity. ECDC offered guidance to EU/EEA healthcare facilities and healthcare providers on infection prevention and control measures for the management of possible and confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in healthcare settings. In support of the Council Recommendation on a coordinated approach to the restriction of free movement in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, ECDC developed a weekly publication of an EU Member State map, showing the risk levels across the regions in Europe using a traffic light system. The Centre continued to offer whole genome sequencing services to Member States that do not yet have the capacity or resources to support the investigation of multinational outbreaks. This proved to be particularly useful in 2020, when sequencing services for SARS-CoV-2 were offered and used by Member States.

ECDC provided effective support to vaccination strategies related work at EU and Member State level. In collaboration with the European Medicines Agency the joint EU level monitoring system for COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and adverse effects was developed.

Adopted in 2020, the ECDC Strategy 2021-2027 defines ECDC’s goals in the coming years as ensuring that decision-makers receive the necessary advice and scientific evidence to support changes in policy and practice in the area of communicable disease prevention and control. However, the support and promotion of countries in disease prevention and control is not limited to the EU, as various cooperations with CDC’s show. One of the goals is to support and strengthen public health systems’ preparedness and response capacities. These measures are investments in the control and prevention of diseases by improving health security in the European neighbourhood and worldwide.

Looking at the multitude of measures that have been established in connection with the pandemic, ECDC also pointed out the need to pursue the digitalisation of the EU surveillance system to enable more timely monitoring of the communicable disease epidemiology with more machine-led collection of data.

The interaction with EU Member States is one of the most important points when it comes to truly understand the gaps in their communicable disease prevention and control systems to better prevent, detect, assess, and respond to future threats.

On 11 November 2020, as part of building a European Health Union, the European Commission put forward a legislative proposal to extend the mandate of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). The initiative is among the first steps towards building the European health union announced by President Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union address. The proposals put forward aim to strengthen the EU's health security framework, and to reinforce the crisis preparedness and response role of key EU agencies.

As the Commission pointed out, the ECDC and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have been at the forefront of the EU's work to address the coronavirus pandemic. However, Covid-19 has shown that both agencies need to be reinforced and equipped with stronger mandates to better protect EU citizens and address cross-border health threats.

The proposal suggested to reinforce the ECDC mandate so that it may support the Commission and the Member States in the following areas:

  • epidemiological surveillance via integrated systems enabling real-time surveillance;
  • preparedness and response planning, reporting and auditing;
  • provision of non-binding recommendations and options for risk management;
  • capacity to mobilise and deploy an EU Health Task Force to assist local response in the Member States;
  • building a network of EU reference laboratories and a network for substances of human origin.