The Flu Awareness Campaign is marked across the WHO European Region every year in October. It aims to raise awareness of the importance of vaccination for people’s health and well-being and to increase the uptake of seasonal influenza vaccination of people with underlying risk factors.
This document is the first update of the technical report ‘Options for the use of rapid antigen detection tests (RADTs) for COVID-19 in the EU/EEA’. It is intended to facilitate further discussions between Member States on the settings and purpose for which it is appropriate to use RADTs and summarises key considerations for their implementation. Reaching an agreement on settings and performance criteria will be critical for the success of EU/EEA-wide surveillance purposes and for measures related to cross-border travel.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has published the first update of the technical report Options for the use of rapid antigen detection tests for COVID-19 in the EU/EEA, originally released in November 2020.
Although the overall number of influenza detections in the majority of EU/EEA countries is still low, indications show that influenza circulation is above the seasonal threshold in Croatia, which is unusually early. The main reported subtype among the cases recorded in EU/EEA during the past month is A(H3N2), which disproportionally affects older people, and is associated with lower vaccine effectiveness. This is a sign that the upcoming influenza season could be severe for elderly people, and that influenza patterns may vary between countries in terms of timing.
This report presents the results of the 11th round of the external quality assessment (EQA-11) scheme for typing of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica organised for the national public health national reference laboratories (NPHRLs) in ECDC’s Food- and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses network (FWD-Net) managed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). The EQA-11 scheme was arranged by the Section for Foodborne Infections at the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) in Denmark.