Dear member of the General Assembly,
Dear NRC Chair,
Dear NRC Contact person,
The ERC Board has taken the decision on Friday to postpone publication of the ERC Guidelines until 2021. This decision has been taken partly because most of us are now consumed with work related to the COVID-19 crisis but we also think there will be little interest in our guidelines so soon after the COVID-19 crisis (assuming it concludes this year).
We are having discussions about this year’s ERC Congress and will make an announcement about this soon.
Although we will cancel the face-to-face meeting of the General Assembly on 25th June and the Board Meeting on 26th June, I anticipate that we will try to hold a GA Meeting by Zoom on one of those days, we will confirm this very soon.
These are challenging times for all of us and I am conscious that many of you have asked the ERC for guidance on resuscitation training and practice during this COVID-19 pandemic. Several NRCs have already produced guidance and, in some cases, published this online.
You will have received last week a link to a survey which has enabled us to establish the approach currently being taken by the NRCs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A rapid review has just been completed by ILCOR so that the limited science around the risk of transmission of viral infection during CPR can be evaluated. I anticipate that ILCOR will publish recommendations imminently. The ERC will take the ILCOR recommendations and combine these with the results of the NRC survey to produce guidance on CPR for both in- and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
I hope we will be in a position to publish this on the ERC website by early next week.
Kind regards
Yours faithfully,
Professor Jerry Nolan
Chairman
European Resuscitation Council
Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine,
Royal United Hospital, Bath
UK