Surveillance and studies in a pandemic: Report on fourth meeting of the SSiaP working group

The final report of the fourth meeting of ECDC’s Surveillance and Studies in a pandemic (SSiaP) working group, which took place on 14-15 July in Stockholm, presents the outcomes of the discussions on how to address the challenges of surveillance during a pandemic. Topics included experiences with the H1N1 pandemic in several countries, technical and scientific aspects of monitoring in a pandemic, and an agreement on the minimum scope of surveillance tasks that EU Member States can reasonably deliver in a situation of the magnitude of the current H1N1 pandemic. Participants from 19 EU/EEA countries, the European Commission, two candidate countries, and two potential candidate countries attended the meeting. Invited speakers came from WHO headquarters (Geneva) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta). Also attending were representatives from the Australian Department of Health and Aging (Canberra) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (Ottawa).