Message from  the organizing committee:

Hope this message finds you all well in this particular moment, when the world is facing an unprecedented health emergency. 

While the countries are struggling with the pandemic and many of us are involved in confronting the crisis in the front line, I believe it is also time to start thinking about our lives once the situation will revert to normality. At some point COVID-19 will be past history and we will all want to get back to the interaction and collaboration with colleagues. As a matter of fact, this is the way science is fed with passion and boosted with new ideas.

As you all may be informed, we have moved our “Science meets Policy” conference: Modern technologies to enable response to crises: Next Generation Sequencing to tackle food-borne diseases in the EU to Sept 25, 2020, which seems a reasonable lapse of time for the backlashes of this crisis to be over and now we have re-opened the link for the online registration.

We are aware that the actual necessity of keeping people apart led to cancellation of many events and that this will cause the second half of the year 2020 to be packed with conferences and physical meetings here and there, but at the same time we think that if we have learnt something from the pandemic is that the only winning strategy is preparedness and that this can only be achieved in peace times rather than being forced to make decisions under the pressure of an ongoing crisis.

In this frame, I believe it is important that we get back to where we left when Italy was first blasted by the COVID-19 cases and we took the decision to postpone the conference. Indeed, I think we really need to discuss altogether the importance to have a proper technical and political framework for the Authorities to make decisions on the basis of NGS data. 

This is certainly true for food-borne infections but definitely applies to any infectious disease.

I take the occasion to wish you all the best and I really hope to see you all in the wonderful city of Rome next  September 25

But stay safe at home for the moment

Stefano Morabito
Director, European Reference Laboratory for E. coli