The health and safety of Diaverum's patients, employees and partners is always our top priority. Diaverum has been closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation since January and has assigned a crisis preparedness group dedicated to the specific issue with daily meetings to stay updated on the situation. This is a situation that changes day to day, sometimes hour to hour, and we continue to assess the situation accordingly.
Diaverum implemented contingency plans regarding COVID-19 early on throughout our organization and Diaverum has ongoing dialogues with the country teams and public authorities in all the markets where we operate. As our patients are dependable on our services and as haemodialysis patients are particularly predisposed to infections, we have re-issued detailed guidance to our clinical staff on the continued importance of strict adherence to infection control policies and procedures. We have also taken far-reaching precautionary actions and have contingency plans ensuring that all Diaverum patients can be confident that they will receive dialysis care as needed, also in the event of a larger scale outbreak.
We understand that there may be a growing concern among our patients and their family members and are committed to help our patients best understand how they can protect themselves from this viral illness. New, updated policies have been shared across the company to mitigate risks from medical, operational, HR and communication perspectives. The new policies have been adapted to comply with each country's own health authorities’ regulations and been translated to local languages. These policies have been strongly communicated to all Diaverum staff and have also been turned into graphic communication made visible in all of our clinics and offices. Diaverum is also developing an internal site to gather all information related to COVID-19, easily accessible for all Diaverum staff.
As a precaution to minimize the risk for all renal care patients (Diaverum and non-Diaverum), Diaverum has decided to temporarily pause our d.HOLIDAY program until further notice. This means that we currently restrict holiday patients (with some individually assessed exceptions) in all our clinics and strongly advise against our patients traveling abroad.
Moreover, no larger group meetings or conferences are taking place within our organization and previously planned events have either been postponed or converted into virtual meetings.
We are closely monitoring the situation and taking proactive measures to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our patients and employees and continue our efforts to support our healthcare professionals in providing excellent medical care to each and every one of our patients.
Stay healthy and continue to follow the advice of your local health authorities.