Building country-level capacity to estimate the burden of COVID-19

The European Burden of Disease Network (burden-eu) joins 271 members from 50 countries. Upon the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, several of these members started studies to estimate the burden of COVID-19 in their countries, and many others showed interest in taking steps to launch such studies. Capacity building is one of the key pillars of burden-eu, and the ultimate goal of several of its activities. In mid-2020, a group within burden-eu convened to establish an approach to support the network's members to establish national studies. First, the grouped discussed the methodology, data requirements and resources needed to implement a national study. Based on the output of these discussions, a comprehensive protocol was published on the network's website, and a scientific article was published in an open-access journal. To present this methodology, share already finalized studies, and discuss challenges and opportunities for future studies, in November 2020 burden-eu organized a public webinar, which was attended by over 100 participants. The network's website collects and continuously posts all published articles related to the burden of COVID Burden-eu. Burden-eu also formed the Burden of COVID-19 Working Group, which is open to all network members conducting or interested in implementing national studies. This group aims to share experiences in national burden of COVID-19 studies; support each other with calculations, model assumptions, data gaps; harmonize methodologies and align strategies for communicating results; and discuss research and upcoming evidence on long-COVID. The group meets regularly to achieve these aims. Lastly, the network launched an online discussion forum, where members can post questions and receive answers from peers in an interactive and rapid way. All these efforts have resulted in several studies being launched, and are allowing for harmonized approaches to be used and comparable estimates to be generated.