Exercise Format
The exercise took place in Grand Hotel Palatino in Rome, Italy on Wednesday 12 December (started at 0900 – interrupted at 1700) and Thursday 13 December (restarted at 0900 – finished at 1215) 2018. The total duration is one day and half. The exercise run for the first two blocks in with a compressed time, these two blocks that took place in the first day and represented the scenario events of two days. While, for the third block that took place in the second day, the exercise restarted from ten days after the events of the first exercise’s day and represented the events of one day.
The participating countries include the following 8 Member States:
- Bulgaria,
- Croatia,
- Greece,
- Italy,
- Malta,
- Portugal,
- Romania and
- Spain;
as well as the pre-accession countries:
- Albania,
- Montenegro and
- Turkey
- plus Ukraine.
In addition, other experts were invited also included stakeholders from:
- World Health Organization (WHO-Euro),
- European Commission and
- ECDC.
The Table Top Exercise was conducted in the conference room. Each group of country experts was divided on four separate tables. The participants were encouraged to share thoughts and ideas as well as seek information and advice from other countries and the subject matter experts by simply walking around the room and talking to them.
The Exercise was structured into thirty-three paper injects, which composed the scenario. In particular, the scenario was dividend in three block:
- Blocks 1 and 2 (Day 1): consisted of a list of injects with the purpose to develop the scenario and to encourage the interaction among the participants on the response to the health threat;
- Block 3 (Day 2): composed by a series of vignettes, one for each country, with a brief slightly different extensions of the scenario that had in some cases the purpose to encourage the interaction among the countries and in other case an individual work for some countries. The inner aim of this Exercise block was to evaluate the countries measures and recovery.
It was asked to the participants to respond to the scenario referring to current arrangements, plans and procedures that they might use in responding to such a crisis, to discuss decisions and seek solutions to the issues raised. This allowed participants to learn and share knowledge and experience.
To encourage interaction among the participants and sharing of information not all country tables received all injects. Thus, as in a real event, some countries received specific information, which could also impact on other countries. Moreover, they were encouraged to share this information through bilateral meetings or by using the microphone to inform whole room when the information had a large interest, simulating the sharing of information through EWRS, EPIS and IHR for example.