The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly escalating globally and putting an enormous strain on medical and other front-line health and community services everywhere. It seems very wrong and irresponsible for us to continue to plan on holding the 6th World One Health Congress in Edinburgh in June, and potentially place you and all our delegates at risk of infection.

The #WOHC2020 Organising Committee has therefore decided to re-schedule the Congress, and now plans to hold it from 30 October to 3 November 2020 instead, ending most appropriately on the annual One Health Day. We hope you will all remain safe and well in the intervening period, and we look forward to welcoming you to Edinburgh for an exciting and informative 6th World One Health Congress on 30 Oct-3 Nov 2020.

We are planning extra sessions on SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 and are specifically welcoming abstracts with an emphasis on: pathogenesis and clinical manifestations / virology and epidemiology/ intervention strategies / clinical and outbreak management.

The Congress will take place in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC), the same venue as initially planned. All registrations will be transferred to the new dates and all abstracts that have been accepted for presentation will remain in the programme unless the authors notify us that they wish to withdraw.

New important dates:

• early bird registration till 18 September.
• abstract presenter registration till 4 September.
• late breaker abstract submission deadline is 18 September.

We will continue to monitor the situation and provide further updates on our website.