When we – very in early 2020 –  realized that SARS-CoV-2 is a virus with significant potential to result in a worldwide spread, i.e. it may not be confined to China, where the first cases were reported, the board of ICLAM started to become nervous. And then, when the World Health Organization declared Covid19 a pandemic (on 11 March), all alarm bells rang. ICLAM Tokyo was scheduled to take place in 2022. What if the pandemic would last more than a year? Would it disrupt business, in particular would it be a major challenge for the Life and Health Insurance industry? What else may happen that would impact the preparation and eventual the execution of ICLAM 2022?

In conjunction with the Tokyo Organizing committee, we discussed the options. Should we make ICLAM 2022 a virtual event? Should we try a hybrid event (e.g. local face-to-face attendance, international delegates per virtual means)? Or should we postpone or even cancel the conference?

In the end we dismissed the idea of an online event. After all, ICLAM conferences are not only scientific meetings, but also networking platforms. Given the uncertainties of the situation at that point in time, it seemed overly cautious to outright cancel the Tokyo conference. So we decided to postpone ICLAM 2022 for a year.

Since then we have seen worldwide COVID 19 incidence exploding (over 200 million cumulative cases at the end of August 2021, with almost 4.5 million deaths), we have seen the emergence of even more dangerous variants of the virus and we have seen massive disruptions to business and travel. Also we have seen the rapid development and roll-out of various effective vaccines; now over 5 billion doses have been administered worldwide.

Yet, we are not anywhere near the end of the pandemic. Variants may be an ongoing problem, unequal vaccination rates will impact travel for months to come. There is reason to believe though, that during 2022 we will witness a decline in infections, hospitalizations and deaths as well as reduced restrictions and recovering economies.

And so we are optimistic that in the autumn of 2023 we will get together in Tokyo for the 27^th ICLAM conference.

Dr. Detloff Rump

President, ICLAM