Now the number of COVID-19 patients has reduced significantly, the hospitals can again focus on their core activities. Already activated sites are able to recruit patients again and new sites are being opened.

The worst of the COVID-19 crisis now seems to be over in Europe, at least for a moment, and hospital services are beginning to return to normal activity. ImmunAID is actively working to relaunch the process of centre opening, finalizing the contractual formalities, training the sites, dispatching the materials, etc. New sites were recently opened, leading to a total of 10 active centres at the moment and more will be opened soon. The list is available here.

The Hospices Civils de Lyon are joining the ImmunAID effort to improve diagnosis and conditions of patients suffering from systemic auto-inflammatory diseases. Indeed, two sites were opened the past weeks, namely the team from Pr. Belot, specialized in pediatric rheumatology at the Femme Mère Enfant hospital and the team from Pr. Sève and Dr. Jamilloux at the internal medicine department of the Croix-Rousse hospital.

In Nantes, the team of Pr. Hamidou, head of the internal medicine department, is now also ready to recruit patients at the University Hospital.

First non-French centre to be opened, the team of Pr. Avcin in Ljubjana, Slovenia, has also received the green light from the sponsor to proceed to the first recruitments. The Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology department of the University Children’s Hospital Ljubljana provides comprehensive services for children with autoinflammatory and immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. It is the only tertiary care paediatric rheumatology center in Slovenia with approx. 2500 paediatric rheumatology clinic visits per year and is a selected core member of the European Reference Network RITA (“Rare immunological and auto-inflammatory diseases”) and Slovenian National Coordinating Center of the PRINTO network.

Other centres, especially in France and Spain are in the starting blocks!