A recent communication from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development ( OECD) dedicated to the " Tracking and tracing of COVID: Protecting privacy and data while using apps and biometrics" was recently published. It highlights the following topics: Digital technologies, in particular mobile and biometric applications, are being adopted in innovative ways to improve the...

Amidst the disrupting circumstances resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic, the study COVID-19 in the Mediterranean and Africa: Diagnosis, Policy Responses, Preliminary Assessment and Way Forward provides an analysis of the contagion between February and April 2020 in the Mediterranean and Africa. It assesses the level of preparedness of national healthcare systems and examines the policy...

In order to safeguard Romanian SMEs during the application of the measures imposed by the state of emergency, in the fight against COVID-19, over 40,000 SMEs in Romania are expected to enroll in the Governmental Programme IMM INVEST ROMANIA. Potential beneficiaries will be able to provide liquidity for the current activity or for investments, by accessing guaranteed financing. The programme has...

In just a week, 176 Lithuanian companies have registered on the Lithuanian Entrepreneurship and Export Development Agency’s (“Enterprise Lithuania”) dedicated COVID-19 website and provided information on their capabilities to produce and supply the necessary tools to combat the COVID-19 virus. The coordinated single-window system “Business vs. COVID-19: Supply Opportunities and Support” is...

The European Commission hosted a webinar on "Building cities' resilience: mobilising the local economy" on Wednesday, 15 April 2020. During this Webinar, the Commission provided an overview of the latest responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Two representatives of the cities of Amsterdam and Barcelona also offered insights about present effective city-led interventions. Furthermore, the participants...

secpho, a Spanish cluster organisation in the field of photonics and optics has published a press release on Photonics in Coronavirus Detection. Some highlights summarised from the press release are the following: Infrared Thermography: Through a camera with infrared sensors, a thermal map of the skin can be generated in real time. Combined with appropriate software, such as the bcbMonitor from...

On Thursday, 26 March 2020, secpho, a cluster organisation in the field of photonics and optics, organised a webinar focusing on the different solutions that photonic and other Deep Tech technologies can offer to face the global challenge of COVID-19. Sergio Sáez, cluster manager of secpho, made a brief introduction of the session, in which half of the 90 participants were partners of the cluster...

Clusaga, the Galician Food Clusters ( Cluster Alimentario de Galicia) in collaboration with the Xunta de Galicia and other clusters and associations, has participated in two grouped purchases of personal protection equipment, facilitating the supply of a total of 125,900 masks to companies and freelancers based in the sector and in the Galician community. This guarantees the protection of workers...

The president of the cluster MetaIndustry4 has published a very interesting article related to life beyond the Coronacrisis. He underlines the importance of clusters and early preparation to get out of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic that might be interesting for all clusters in Europe: "Intermediate organisations, such as clusters or local development agencies, will have an even more...

In the face of the Coronacrisis, an innovative project that uses repurposed shipping containers to create plug-in Intensive-Care Units (ICU) with biocontainment through negative pressure was just launched. It goes by the name CURA (Connected Units for Respiratory Aliments) and is an open-source design for emergency COVID-19 hospitals. The first model of CURA has been built and installed at a...