The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has had profound effects across health systems worldwide, and many HIV, viral hepatitis and/or sexually transmitted infection (STI) services have been interrupted. EuroTEST, including regional European and international organisations representing community, health care and public health institutions developed an assessment to understand how this global crisis has affected testing services, in particular, and how to mitigate its effects on the responses to the epidemics going forward.
The main objective of the survey is to assess the impact of COVID-19 on testing for HIV, HBV, HCV, chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhoea among the different actors of the testing response including:
The survey is available in English and Russian, contains 26 main questions (depending on type of service) and will take around 20 minutes to complete. It will be open for responses until [extended to]13 November 2020.
If you or your site provide testing for one or several of these infections, or if you work at a national level public health institution or Ministry of Health and are responsible for HIV and/or viral hepatitis and/or STIs in your country, we encourage you to take the survey by clicking here or copy pasting the following link into your browser: https://is.gd/EuroTESTCOVID19impact
Results will be used to inform advocacy efforts as well as next steps in the regional response to HIV, viral hepatitis and STIs. Results from this assessment will be developed into several publications planned for 2020 and early 2021.
If you have any questions, please contact the EuroTEST secretariat at eurotest.rigshospitalet@regionh.dk.
In parallel, the WHO Regional Office for Europe has launched a call to collect good practices on the response to TB, HIV and viral Hepatitis during the COVID-19 pandemic, which will remain open until December 31, 2020. If you are interested in submitting to their call, you can access their best practice submission portal by clicking here.
