Country support

Country missions

During 2021, an internal procedure on country missions was adopted, based on an analysis of all country missions carried out by ECDC in the period 2015-2020. This is aimed to ensure a corporate, harmonised approach for country missions, and create a central repository for their reports, available on a bilateral basis to the respective Member States and to ECDC. This will make reports more easily retrievable to monitor any required follow-up. Country missions will be carried out at the invitation of a country or following a dialogue between ECDC and the country experts. ECDC will investigate implementing a consolidated programme of country visits with defined steps.

Country overviews

Country overviews aim at collating, integrating, and analysing country-specific information from a variety of sources in a more systematic approach, to gain better understanding of the main strengths and vulnerabilities of Member States. It provides a comprehensive description and visualisation of information on communicable diseases complemented with information on the (public) health system and health status in the respective country.

Work on the country overviews progressed in 2021. The first release is anticipated in 2023, starting with the areas of “Disease Programmes” and “Surveillance”. The work in this area was supported by the Surveillance section.

In October 2021 ECDC initiated a targeted country support initiative aimed at supporting the 11 Member States with COVID-19 vaccination uptake lower than the EU average. A series of bilateral meetings were held with the relevant Member States’ contact point and follow-up activities were initiated. A webinar on social media and misinformation was organised in November 2021 in which experts working directly on these topics were invited from each of the 11 Member States.