Dear Colleagues,

As lockdowns are being eased across Europe, we are all hopefully getting back to our clinics and surgeries. We are also testing our plans for Social Distancing and our PPE requirements. I thought it would be helpful this week to review some of the videos available on the ESCRS COVID-19 website. These videos demonstrate the varied and ingenious solutions our colleagues have devised to make our interactions with patients safer for them and for ourselves.

Dr Vanetti from Milan and our colleagues at the Bristol Eye Hospital in the UK consider the effects caused by aerosol sprays from phaco and vitrectomy machines. Neil Sharma presents a slit lamp shield from Australia and Pavel Stodulka has an inventive system to sterilise waiting rooms. Rohit Shetty from Bangalore, India, shares his study on aerosol generation of phacoemulsification. In general, it appears that guidance in the majority of European countries and also in the USA does not regard (any more) phacoemulsification as an AGP.

At ESCRS, the Executive and the Programme Committee are working diligently to prepare an interesting and varied scientific programme for our first ever Virtual Congress from October 2-4, 2020.  More information on our website www.escrs.org.

Hope you are all safe and well.

Be safe and well and hope to see you online in October!

Rudy Nuijts
Prof. dr Rudy MMA Nuijts
ESCRS President