DRIVE Annual Forum webinars for stakeholders on the 22th and 24th of September: Brand-specific influenza vaccine effectiveness and COVID-19 impact on influenza season

Annual Forum of the DRIVE project (Development of Robust and Innovative Vaccine Effectiveness) 2020 will be this year hosted online on the 22^nd and 24^th September 2020.

The webinar is aimed to DRIVE external stakeholders and all experts on vaccines and infectious diseases, and health policy decision makers. Please contact info@drive.eu to apply for the invitation.

The event will be split in two sessions (please see the full agenda for further details):

The first session, “Brand-specific influenza vaccine effectiveness and COVID-19 impact: how to be better prepared for the 2020/21 season” will be held on Tuesday 22^nd September (3-5:30 pm CET). This session will present:

DRIVE influenza vaccine effectiveness results for the 2019/2020 season
DRIVE study sites’ experiences with COVID-19 pandemic
An external talk by Cornelia Adlhoch (ECDC) about the ECDC management of COVID-19 surveillance in the EU: impact on influenza surveillance.

The second session, “Building on existing influenza infrastructure to monitor and evaluate future COVID-19 vaccines” will be held on Thursday 24^th September (3-5:15 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)

The attendees are encouraged to send questions beforehand to be discussed in the corresponding Q&A sessions. Please send your questions to the following email addresses: garcia_julbay@gva.es and carmona_antser@gva.es

DRIVE’s Annual Forum is a unique opportunity to engage with DRIVE associate partners, research collaborators and external stakeholders. DRIVE’s consortium currently includes 15 members and its research network involves 10 different European countries. It is also envisaged that representatives from the 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 DRIVE Project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 777363. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation and EFPIA.