Dear Colleagues,

As I write today in mid-May 2020, our governments are struggling to guide us on how to safely resume our personal and professional lives. Across Europe clinics closed to elective surgeries for two months are making careful plans to open, while ensuring measures are in place to keep themselves, their staff and their patients free from getting and spreading this virus.

This is a daunting task we face and there will surely be successes and failures along the way. Our colleagues in Italy, Slovenia and the UK share with us their plans for making clinics safe and strategies for dealing with the backlog of patients awaiting surgery. And our colleague Alvin Young in Hong Kong charts for us his experience of COVID-19.

Dr Sethuramam, in a JAMA viewpoint article, gives us an overview on testing for COVID-19 but, more optimistically, scientists at Imperial College London tell us they are trialling a test which could provide results in a little over a minute. If this test were successful and widely available, it would be transformative in managing our clinics in the time before a vaccine is available.

Stay safe and well

Rudy Nuijts
Prof. dr Rudy MMA Nuijts
ESCRS President