ECDC publishes Consolidated Annual Activity Report for 2022
In a year with an unprecedented three Public Health Events in parallel testing the Centre’s capacities, ECDC managed to deliver on almost 90% of its planned outputs. In addition, 2022 marked the year of an adopted strengthened mandate as one of the last blocks of the European Health Union, a legal framework to improve EU capacity in the vital areas of prevention, preparedness, surveillance, risk assessment, early warning, and response.
In the Consolidated Annual Activity Report for 2022 published today, ECDC summarises the work carried out in the previous year as per requirement in its Founding Regulation.[1]
2022 marked the third consecutive year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a year during which ECDC activated two additional so-called Public Health Events: hepatitis of unknown origin in children and the mpox (formerly monkeypox) outbreak. This posed an exceptional challenge for the Centre, testing its capacity to develop risk assessments and guidance for multiple health threats in parallel.
In sum, the work for ECDC in 2022 focussed on these areas:
- the COVID-19 pandemic
- Ukraine crisis, mpox and paediatric hepatitis of unknown origin
- ECDC’s strategy 2021−2027
- ECDC's strengthened mandate.
ECDC delivered 89% of the outputs in 2022 that had been planned in its Single Programming Document 2022–2024. A total of 8% of the planned outputs were postponed, and 3% were delayed or cancelled by the end of the year. Most of the outputs that were postponed or delayed were dependent on the amended legal text of ECDC’s mandate, which was adopted and published in December 2022.
As regards the targets of the current ECDC strategy, the main achievements in 2022 can be summarised as follows:
- ECDC updated its Surveillance Atlas of Infectious Diseases with 2021 data and published updated Annual Epidemiological Report chapters covering 2019, 2020 and 2021, catching up with delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The new ECDC surveillance portal, EpiPulse, was adapted to generate the daily and weekly Communicable Diseases Threats Reports (CDTR), which were published throughout the year.
- ECDC continued producing independent and evidence-based scientific advice. The Centre published 210 ECDC scientific outputs on its website and 65 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals.
- The training of cohorts 2021 and 2022 of the ECDC Fellowship Programme was delivered as planned. In 2022, 24 fellows graduated from the ECDC Fellowship Programme and the EPIET-associated programmes, while 73 fellows were enrolled by the end of the year.
- All ECDC hallmark events were successfully organised: the ESCAIDE conference (23−25 November 2022) was held as a hybrid event for the first time and received overwhelmingly positive feedback; European Antibiotic Awareness Day (18 November 2022), and the ECDC session at the European Health Forum Gastein (28 September 2022).
In 2022, the scientific journal Eurosurveillance - published by ECDC - achieved its highest impact factor ever, with a figure of 21, and now ranks fifth among the journals in its field. The journal is now also signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) publishers’ compact and, as such, is committed to promoting articles and initiatives contributing to the achievement of the health-related SDG Goal 3.
[1] Regulation (EC) No 851/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 establishing a European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Official Journal of the European Union. 2004; L 142:1–11.
