Subject: For info: upcoming ECDC (DTU Food) survey of EARS-Net EQA clinical laboratories re their AST of 6 Reserve antimicrobials - EASTR (2025)
From: "EARS-Net" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, "katrien.latour" <[email-masked]>, "ivanoov" <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, "Iva Butic" <[email-masked]>, "dpieridou" <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, "Anette M. Hammerum" <[email-masked]>, "Barbara Juliane Holzknecht" <[email-masked]>, "Marliin Koolmeister" <[email-masked]>,Kairi Tõnsau <[email-masked]>,Kati Räisänen <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, "sylvie.maugat" <sylvie
Cc: "Julia Weber" <[email-masked]>, "Reinhild Strauss" <[email-masked]>, "katrien.latour" <[email-masked]>, "Lucy.Catteau" <[email-masked]>, "Boudewijn.Catry" <[email-masked]>, "ssabcheva" <[email-masked]>, "ivanoov" <[email-masked]>, "atambic" <[email-masked]>, "iva.butic" <[email-masked]>, "markella.marcou" <[email-masked]>, "lhadjihannas" <[email-masked]>, "vladislav.jakubu" <[email-masked]>, "helena.zemlickova" <[email-masked]>, "Inge.Jenn
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 15:35:33 +0200

Tähelepanu! Tegemist on väljastpoolt asutust saabunud kirjaga. Tundmatu 
saatja korral palume linke ja faile mitte avada.

To: National EQA coordinators for the EARS-Net EQA, 2025
Cc: National Focal Points for AMR; National Coordinators of Coordinating 
Competent Bodies

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for your activities for the EARS-Net EQA, following your 
designation as the national contact for the 2025 EQA by your National Focal 
Point for AMR.

For your information:

ECDC will soon send a survey to the nationally-designated contacts in 
clinical laboratories that were invited to participated in EARS-Net EQAs in 
2021–2024, in all 30 EU/EEA countries.  The survey will be distributed to 
each laboratory by the ECDC contractor for the EARS-Net EQAs in 2021-2024, 
i.e. the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark (DTU 
Food).

Here is more information about the survey:

The survey is named the ‘ECDC EARS-Net survey of clinical laboratories 
regarding antimicrobial susceptibility testing of the WHO AWaRe Reserve 
antimicrobials for selected Gram-negative pathogens, 2025’ (EASTR (2025)). 
Its purpose is to gather information regarding these pathogen-antimicrobial 
combinations, to guide the appropriate use of EARS-Net AMR surveillance data 
for public health purposes, and, importantly, to map the limitations of 
these data.

EASTR (2025) collects information related to antimicrobial susceptibility 
testing (AST) methods for four pathogens (Escherichia coli, Klebsiella 
pneumonia, Acinetobacter species, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and six 
antibiotics from the Reserve group of the WHO AwaRe classification (2023). 
These six antibiotics were newly added, in 2024, to the 
<https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/about-us/networks/disease-networks-and-laboratory-networks/ears-net-data> 
ECDC EARS-Net AMR surveillance 
<https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/antimicrobial-resistance-amr-reporting-protocol-2024> 
protocol (i.e. ceftazidime-avibactam, cefiderocol, ceftolozane-tazobactam, 
imipenem-relebactam and meropenem-vaborbactam) and/or to the EUCAST clinical 
breakpoints (i.e. aztreonam-avibactam, which had breakpoints 
<https://www.eucast.org/fileadmin/src/media/PDFs/EUCAST_files/Breakpoint_tables/Addenda/Aztreonam-avibactam_addendum_22_May_2024.pdf> 
published on 22 May 2024 and included in 
<https://www.eucast.org/clinical_breakpoints> breakpoints table 15.0).

EASTR (2025) was developed as a collaboration between ECDC and DTU Food. The 
survey was discussed with national attendees of the EARS-Net Network meeting 
in June 2024 and at EARS-Net Disease Network Coordination Committee (DNCC) 
meetings in 2023–2025. In Q4 2024, the survey was piloted in 7 laboratories 
in 7 countries.

DTU Food will distribute the survey to laboratories, via a hyperlink in an 
email, using their EQA webtool. Following the national feedback received at 
the Network meeting, DTU Food has provided translations of the survey into 
European languages, including the 24 official EU languages, on its webpage 
( <https://www.food.dtu.dk/english/topics/antimicrobial-resistance/ears-net> 
https://www.food.dtu.dk/english/topics/antimicrobial-resistance/ears-net). 
The pilot indicated that it should take about 60 minutes to complete the 
survey.

ECDC currently plans to present some key findings from EASTR (2025) in the 
ECDC Annual Epidemiological Report (AER) for AMR in 2025, because the 
previous and upcoming EARS-Net surveillance protocol permit reporting of a 
subset of these new antimicrobial data. Subsequently, ECDC plans to report 
on all EASTR (2025) data. If ECDC drafts a public output that includes 
national-level EASTR (2025) data, the standard practice is to send it to 
countries for comments prior to publication. Outputs will not present 
laboratory identifiers.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions ( 
<mailto:[email-masked]> [email-masked]), or you are 
welcome to contact DTU Food directly ( <mailto:[email-masked]> 
[email-masked]).

Thank you, in advance, for your interest in this topic area.

Hanna Merk, Pete Kinross (ECDC)
and Ana Rita Rebelo, Birgitte Helwigh (DTU Food)

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)Gustav III:s boulevard 40, 169 73 Solna, Sweden

Phone +46 (0)8 58 60 10 00

 <https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/> www.ecdc.europa.eu

Follow ECDC on:

 <http://www.facebook.com/ECDC.EU>

 <https://bsky.app/profile/ecdc.europa.eu>

 <http://www.linkedin.com/company/ecdc>

 <http://www.youtube.com/user/ECDCchannel>

 <https://www.instagram.com/ecdc.eu>

 <https://www.threads.net/@ecdc.eu>

Confidentiality Notice
If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you are hereby kindly 
requested, to, consecutively, refrain from disclosing its content to any 
third party, delete it and inform its sender of the erroneous transmittal.