Volberding: COVID-19, HIV get spotlight at first in-person CROI in 4 years
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After 3 years as an all-virtual meeting, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections returns this year to an in-person format at the new Summit Convention Center in Seattle.
We asked Paul A. Volberding, MD, professor emeritus of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and Chief Medical Editor of Infectious Disease News, what he expects from the meeting.
We seem to be waking from 3 years of a nightmare. COVID-19 death and serious illness rates are falling despite very transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants, mask use is declining and official organizations are declaring the end of the pandemic emergency. We are traveling again, and now we have the return of a familiar destination: CROI is back as an in-person conference, and as used to be the case, we look forward to seeing our colleagues and hearing first-hand the results of important research.
CROI will continue to address COVID-19 in addition to our previous array of viruses, opportunistic infections and cancers. It will again be held in Seattle, but appropriate for a new post-COVID-19 world, attendees will gather in a just-opened new Seattle conference center.
What do we expect at this year’s CROI? In HIV, I’m anticipating updates on newer long-acting oral and injected drugs for HIV treatment and PrEP, and new insights into efforts to end the epidemic and to cure HIV infection itself.
We will be considering the implications of the recent failure of an experimental HIV vaccine in the MOSAICO trial and the pressure that creates to do an even better job at implementing current and future drugs and behavioral strategies.
We will celebrate the continued success of PEPFAR and our expanding collaborations with colleagues in the many countries with limited economic resources as we broaden access to lifesaving and even more convenient treatment options.
We have seen the clinical trial networks aimed at HIV used to accelerate our COVID-19 response, and I’m sure we will be hearing about ways to continue these crucial linkages, even as we think ahead to the future epidemics we can clearly expect.
With no doubt, however, we look forward to seeing each other. Active dialogs with scientific presenters and hallway conversations, so limited by the pandemic, are eagerly anticipated. New research partnerships will be forged, giving us hope that future CROI conferences will continue to propel our community.
Similar openings in other aspects of infectious diseases are, of course, also now happening. As a result, we hope to increasingly look back on our receding pandemic while applying its many lessons to make us even more effective in improving the public health.
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