Virtual IDWeek kicks off with 24-hour session on COVID-19
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Like many other medical conferences, IDWeek was converted to a virtual meeting this year because of COVID-19.
The meeting will commence Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 10 a.m. ET with a 24-hour session focused on the pandemic titled, “Chasing the Sun.” The meeting will continue through Sunday, Oct. 25.
Infectious Disease News Chief Medical Editor Paul A. Volberding, MD, said he expects COVID-19 research will “dwarf” most other topics.
“That's going to be a huge topic for ID week. It's going to make IDWeek probably more attended than any in history and much more international, because there's no physical barrier except for time zones,” Volberding, professor of medicine and director of the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, told Healio.
Volberding said clinicians have “adapted” to virtual meetings.
“I think, in some settings, it actually is much better than an in-person meeting,” he said. “You can reach a much bigger audience than you can with a live meeting. It’s also been used a lot with large committees where otherwise people sitting in a room with 30 people trying to look at a single screen are distracted. They don't really see the data. But here, by sharing the screen on Zoom, everyone sees the data. The information exchanges are actually much better. In many respects, a virtual meeting is an improved form of information interchange, but what you lose is the networking and personal interaction.”
Volberding is interested to see what research emerges regarding antivirals and long-acting injectables for HIV. He expects that because of the “efficiency” of virtual meetings, conferences will continue to operate virtually for the foreseeable future.
“I think we're going to be using virtual meetings for a considerable time,” Volberding said. “What we've learned, in terms of the benefits of virtual meetings, will continue. In the future I don’t think we’ll see large meetings that don't have a virtual component.”
Interested participants can register via the IDWeek website.
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IDWeek. Chasing the Sun. https://idweek.org/. Accessed Oct. 19, 2020.
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