top of page
Search

ID-CARE heads to Tallin, Estonia for the 4th VERDI General Assembly.

Last week the ID-CARE VERDI team attended the 4th General Assembly in Tallin, Estonia.

This year, the meeting had a particular focus on the sustainability of the VERDI project, alongside the usual overview of updates and progress from each of the 7 work packages (WPs).


The first day started with presentations from both the Estonian Ministry of Health and the European Commission, the first discussing the impact of the pandemic in Estonia and the latter outlining the current plans to improve European pandemic preparedness. VERDI partners then discussed the future directions for VERDI, and how the project can be sustained. VERDI’s connection to the ORCHESTRA project was highlighted, along with the inclusion of “big data” and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Partners also mentioned the current mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and VERDI’s support in this outbreak.


The rest of the day included talks from WP7 on mpox and pandemic preparedness, in which the ID-CARE team at University of Verona is involved. ID-CARE Director, Evelina Tacconelli, presented on the ID-CARE team’s work with the Cohort Coordination Board (CCB) which encourages the alignment of and collaboration between different European cohort-based research projects. The CCB has since been aligned with the Trial Coordination Board (TCB) upon inclusion into the CoMeCT project, to further coordinate research efforts across cohorts and trials in Europe for pandemic preparedness.


Also included in WP7 was the presentation of an interesting novel analysis of mpox content on the video-sharing platform, TikTok. Researchers analysed videos mentioning mpox to see how the general public understands and communicates about mpox. They found videos of “clinical influencers” sharing information on symptoms and prevention, some “prank” videos, educational videos discussing the renaming of mpox and navigating stigma, plus insight into people’s lived experiences with mpox.


The rest of the meeting covered presentations on WP5’s communications activities, WP1’s project management overview, WP4’s work on data sharing, and WP2’s household transmission studies. Finally, WP3 presented a series of interesting talks, one in particular focussing on the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on infant vaccination rates.

This event provided a great opportunity to engage with fellow VERDI colleagues and get an overview on how the different WPs have been progressing, and what they have discovered. The fifth and final VERDI General Assembly will be held next year, and we look forward to seeing our colleagues there again!

The VERDI project aims to understand the impact of SARS-COV-2 Variants of Concern (VoC) on the health of pregnant women and children and VoC effect on clinical outcomes, the vaccination efficacy and transmission characteristics. Funded by HorizonEurope, the VERDI project was born to address important research questions, fill the knowledge gap across these populations and provide evidence-base recommendations for the control of Covid-19. Discover more on our project page: https://www.id-care.net/projects/verdi

Comments


LOGO IDCARE bianco.png
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

Borgo Roma-Policlinico G.B. Rossi, Piazzale Antonio Ludovico Scuro, 10, 37134, Verona, Italy.

Borgo Trento-Ospedale Borgo Trento Piazzale Aristide Stefani, 1 - 37126, Verona, Italy

+39 045 8128243

Copyright © 2024 ID-Care.

bottom of page