New ECCMID Outreach Grant

ESCMID is proud to announce a new grant with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This new grant is aimed at supporting and promoting participation from persons residing in Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries, and will cover the full registration costs for the 31st ECCMID for successful applicants.

We are excited to be able to further ESCMID's mission of promoting and supporting research, education, training, and good medical practice across the globe.

Find out more and apply on the ESCMID Website

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19th ESCMID Summer School – registration now open!

Registrations are now being accepted for the 19th ESCMID Summer School, which will take place in Carcavelos, Portugal, from 4 – 11 September 2021. 

ESCMID Summer School is a one-week course dedicated to postgraduate and continuing medical education. The programme covers a broad range of topics in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases and will interest young MDs at the end of their specialty training as well as biologists, pharmacists, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows working in the infection field.

Registration, as well as applications for attendance grants, can be accessed on the Summer School website.

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ECCMID 2021 Art Gallery – The Exhibition is open!

The ECCMID 2021 Art Gallery is now available for viewing! 

Pandemic-related works of art have been collected from members of the ESCMID community in many media, including Paintings, Photography, Poetry, Sculpture and Storywriting.

View all of the fantastic artistic works on the ECCMID Art Gallery website. 

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EMA communication: Latest updates on COVID-19 vaccines

EMA would like to share with ESCMID the recent communications on COVID-19 vaccines:

• First COVID-19 vaccine approved for children aged 12 to 15 in EU
• Insufficient data on use of inhaled corticosteroids to treat COVID-19 
• EMA issues advice on use of sotrovimab (VIR-7831) for treating COVID-19 
• Vaxzevria (AstraZeneka): further advice on blood clots and low blood platelets
• More flexible storage conditions for BioNTech/Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine 

All the latest updates on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments are available by clicking here.

Please feel free disseminate this message to anyone else who might be interested in this information.

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GARDP Live Webinar: Openly accessible resources for the global antimicrobial R&D community

Don’t miss the next GARDP Live Webinar ‘Openly accessible resources for the global antimicrobial R&D community’, taking place on Thursday, 10 June 2021 from 15:30 – 17:00 CEST.

Speaking in the webinar are Eva Garmendia (Coordinator, Uppsala Antibiotic Center, Sweden), David Jenkins (President, British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, UK), and Astrid Pentz-Murr (Scientific Affairs Manager, GARDP, Switzerland). The session will be moderated by Katie Prosen (The Pew Charitable Trusts, US).

Register on the GARDP website.

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EMA communication: "Human Medicines Highlights" Newsletter - May 2021 issue

EMA is pleased to share with ESCMID the latest edition of the EMA monthly Newsletter which includes decisions by EMA Scientific Committees and updates on medicines safety. We hope that you will find this useful. 

You can access the Newsletter by clicking here. Previous editions can also be found on this page.

For more information on the European regulatory system for medicines, please click here (brochure available in all languages).

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PUBLIC CONSULTATION OPEN for the “European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases: 2021 update on the treatment guidance document for Clostridioides difficile infection in adults”

The draft version of the “European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases: 2021 update on the treatment guidance document for Clostridioides difficile infection in adults” has now entered the Public Consultation Phase.

ESCMID members wishing to comment on the manuscript should write to guidancedocuments@escmid.org indicating their ESCMID membership number. 

You will receive the confidential manuscript, along with the comments form for listing feedback and the together with the template to register their comments and the AGREE GLOBAL RATING SCALE form to be completed (More information about the AGREE II tool can be found here).

Please note that by accepting to participate to the Public Consultation Phase, you agree to commit to confidentiality and to respond within the deadline.

The deadline to provide feedback and comments is 5 July 2021.

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CMI highlight: An open-label randomized, controlled trial of the effect of lopinavir/ritonavir, lopinavir/ritonavir plus IFN-β-1a and hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients with COVID-19

The present study reports the results of the DisCoVeRy clinical trial, evaluating lopinavir/ritonavir with or without IFN-ß-1a, or hydroxychloroquine in comparison with control for the treatment of inpatients with COVID-19.

Participants had mostly moderate disease (63.4%) covering a large spectrum of clinical presentations. Consistently with Solidarity results, investigational treatments failed to improve the clinical course of COVID-19. No effect on SARS-CoV-2 clearance was observed, using a reproducible normalized method. Furthermore, significantly more SAEs were reported in the lopinavir/ritonavir-containing arms than in the control arm.

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