The EISS group had its 10th Annual Meeting from 19–21 May in Birmingham, the United Kingdom, with over 90 participants from all over the world, among whom Denis Coulombier, as representative of the newly established ECDC, Reiko Saito as guest speaker from Japan and four EPIET trainees. The meeting was kindly and efficiently hosted by Douglas Fleming, the Director of the Royal College of General Practitioners Birmingham Research Unit.

We learned that EISS is performing well both in the clinical and virological part. We further welcomed four new associate members: Cyprus, Estonia, Greece and Hungary. This means that all 25 MS have now joined EISS, so that one of our major objectives has been achieved. Other important results include:
- A new Task Group has been initiated with two sub-groups, one on vaccine uptake and one on vaccine effectiveness. This is a crucial step in the perspective of a pandemic threat..
- Agreement on a harmonized calculation of a clinical incidence basezone
- Agreement on an EISS swab form
- Agreement on the selection of an influenza sequence database
- Agreement on the evaluation of the Italian influenza surveillance scheme

Besides, we had a lot of intense debates about various topics such as the influenza-like illness case definition, quick methods of measuring the burden of influenza in Sweden, the indicators used to measure influenza activity, the reporting of characterisation data and pandemic planning. Outsiders were stuck by the good atmosphere in the ever expanding EISS group. This is very important as we will face changes & challenges in the near future, especially when we need to be prepared for a potential pandemic threat.

On behalf of the EISS Co-ordination Centre team
Koos van der Velden