The DRIVE Annual Forum 2020 will be hosted online on the 22nd and 24th September 2020. The event will be split in two sessions:
The first session, entitled “Brand-specific influenza vaccine effectiveness and COVID-19 impact: how to be better prepared for the 2020/21 season” will be held on Tuesday 22nd September (from 3 to 5:30 pm CET). In this session:
- DRIVE influenza vaccine effectiveness results for the 2019/2020 season will be presented
- DRIVE Study sites will share their experience with COVID-19 pandemic
- This session will also include an external talk about the impact of COVID-19 on influenza surveillance (speaker from European institution to be confirmed).
The second session, entitled “Building on existing influenza infrastructure to monitor and evaluate future COVID-19 vaccines” will be held on Thursday 24th September (from 3 to 5:00 pm CET). This session will focus on DRIVE sustainability in the COVID-19 era and will include external talks from:
- Marco Cavalieri (European Medicines Agency)
- Miriam Sturkenboom (ACCESS project (vACcine Covid-19 monitoring readinESS) and VAC4EU network)
- Hector Izurieta (U.S Food and Drug Administration)
DRIVE Annual Forum is a unique opportunity to engage with DRIVE associate partners, research collaborators and external stakeholders. DRIVE consortium is currently formed by 15 members and its research network involves 10 different European countries. It is also envisaged that representatives from European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs), European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) will be present.
The final agenda, as well as the platform to join the webinars will be posted in the coming days.