The Epidemic Intelligence Information System (EPIS) is a web-based communication platform that allows nominated public health experts to exchange technical information to assess whether current and emerging public health threats have a potential impact in the European Union (EU).
The overall aim of the protocol is to support the implementation of a PPS of HAIs and antimicrobial use in European long-term care facilities, to meet the abovementioned objectives for ECDC surveillance.
In 2016–2017, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) organised the third point prevalence survey (PPS) of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial use in European long-term care facilities (LTCFs) or HALT-3.
This report provides an analysis of the external quality assessment (EQA) for the antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) performance of laboratories participating in the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net) in 2019. A total of 952 laboratories (1–95 per country) from 30 EU/EEA countries participated in the EQA exercise.