On 26 July ECDC published the Rapid Risk Assessment COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities in the EU/EEA in the context of current vaccine coverage, following several outbreaks that occurred in these settings during the past six months in several EU/EEA countries, resulting in some cases of severe disease and deaths.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreaks in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) in European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries have caused significant morbidity and mortality since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this update, ECDC analyses the risk of further escalation of COVID-19 in the countries that have reported a recent increase in COVID-19 cases and the risk of further escalation of COVID-19 across all EU/EEA countries and the UK.
Following the joint statement from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on 11 July 2022, ECDC has released Preliminary public health considerations for COVID-19 vaccination strategies in the second half of 2022. ECDC, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, has also published Operational considerations for respiratory virus surveillance in Europe.
A continuous high incidence or a large surge in cases in the early summer would imply a large benefit from an early second booster roll-out but optimal timing will largely depend on trends in infections ECDC says in the latest technical report on a second mRNA COVID-19 vaccine booster dose.
This case study is aimed at building capacity on outbreak response in municipalities that have large numbers of foreign temporary workers, where an outbreak response needs to involve the employers and possibly other municipal services, including public health services.
As of 2 March, 66 countries have reported cases of novel coronavirus disease 2019. The risk associated with COVID-19 infection for people in the EU/EEA and UK is currently considered to be moderate to high, based on the probability of transmission and the impact of the disease.
This core protocol for ECDC studies of vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection laboratory-confirmed with SARS-CoV-2 or with influenza, version 2.0, represents an update to the main elements for a multi-country hospital-based study of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in patients hospitalised with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), already published as version 1.0.