September 28th 2020

 

NSCMID chairman´s report 2019/2020

 

Annual meeting 2019: The 36^th Annual Meeting of NSCMID was held in Trondheim, 12-15^th September 2019 at the Clarion Hotel & Congress, Trondheim. Jan Egil Afset was the meeting president which was great success and attended by 250 registered participants. During the conference there were 11 scientific symposia; 37 speakers from eight countries presented their work and 36 posters were presented. Martin Steinbakk, a Norwegian pioneer in the fight against antibiotic resistance, gave the honorary lecture, “Antibiotics: Miracle drugs or pig food?” The social program was also exceptional, including an organ concert in the medieval cathedral and the traditional conference dinner where local talents and NSCMID members provided excellent entertainment. The financial outcome of the meeting turned a small surplus of NOK 214.821,-  or 21.269 Euro.

 

NSCMID board meeting and SSAC Foundation meeting in Stockholm: The spring meeting of the NSCMID board and SSAC Foundation board meeting took place virtually in March 2020. 500.000 SEK was allocated for conditional use by the NSCMID scientific annual meeting in 2021 to cover costs for that meeting. 500.000 SEK was distributed to 5 grant awardees.

Travel Grants: Due to cancellation of the Annual Meeting, no travel grants were issued.

 

NSCMID Working groups: High level isolation working group organized a workshop at the meeting in Trondheim in 2019 but canceled their meeting in 2020 due to COVID-19. The group has however been very active by other means during the current pandemic, mainly by informal communication. The chair is Arne Broch Brantsæter. The NordicAST had two meeting, one in Stockholm in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and one virtual meeting. The annual workshop was cancelled. The chair is Iren Høyland Löhr. A new working group, Nordic paediatric infectious diseases, NORPID was established in the fall of 2019, chaired by Terho Heikkinen. Other working groups (parasites, ticks, shiga-toxin producing E. coli) have not provided reports to the society for 2019-20.

 

Annual meeting 2020: This year´s annual meeting in Sweden was to be chaired in September by Andreas Matussek, Stockholm. Preparations were well underway, with an agenda, several confirmed speakers, venue and sponsors who had made a commitment to participate in the meeting. It was none the less unanimously decided that proceeding with the meeting during an escalating pandemic of COVID-19 would be risky and might incur significant losses for NSCMID. It was therefore decided to cancel the meeting. The decision was painful but unanimous. It has been decided however, that the subsequent meeting will be held in Finland in 2021 and preparations are already underway.

 

With kind regards,

 

Professor Magnus Gottfredsson, MD, PhD, FACP,

NSCMID chairman