My name is Marta Valenciano,

I'm an epidemiologist. I am the coordinator of the I-MOVE-COVID-19 Project.

The I-MOVE-COVID-19 network is a consortium

that includes 22 partners from 12 countries.

The members of this consortium are

public health institutes, national reference laboratories, university hospitals,

networks of Sentinel GPs and small and medium enterprises.

In the past 12 years we have worked together

to measure, every year, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine.

With the funding of H2020, we have adapted activities to Covid.

The aim of the project

is to strengthen epidemiological and virological surveillance,

to conduct studies to respond to key public health issues

and to evaluate public health interventions such as the vaccine once it will be available.

We work closely with other European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control,

and with WHO Europe to make sure that our results

are useful public health action.

We face a new virus, a new disease,

there are key issues that we need to understand.

Research brings us the responses to all these unknowns around the virus,

the hosts, so how each individual responds to the infection

or to the disease

and also responds to unknowns

about environmental factors that affect the transmissibility of the virus.

It is striking and impressive how in this current crisis,

all public health researchers are collaborating to provide

rapid results that can be used immediately. Results are shared in an open way

and are immediately available.

The most challenging for the I-MOVE network is that our partners

are first line responders in their corresponding region or country.

Therefore, they are extremely busy detecting cases, treating them, testing them

and analysing data to provide information for action.

The Commission is funding our activities in the Covid area.

In addition, the European colleagues are supporting us

to share results among different consortia and projects and to collaborate

and the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention

is actively participating in our discussions

to make sure that we work towards their strategy in terms of research and surveillance.

Cross-border collaboration in research is essential.

We need to provide precise results by age group, by risk group, by subpopulation.

That can only be done if we pull data from different European countries,

from different European hospitals and laboratories.

The results of one country will not be enough

to provide these important results.

We are stronger TOGETHER, all united against the coronavirus.