Dear Colleagues,
The unfolding coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has significantly affected the meetings industry. As destinations work to contain the spread of the virus, many countries, states and cities have banned large events. It is therefore, with regret that we need to inform you that ISAPS Board of Directors (BOD) has made the difficult but appropriate decision to postpone the ISAPS Congress which was to be held in Vienna from 2-5 September 2020 to 9-12 September 2021.
Therefore we have decided to postpone as well the 8th SOS Symposium.
We know that this change may cause great inconvenience for you and we are sincerely sorry, but we hope that you understand our wish to avoid further uncertainty for you by delaying the decision.
Even though the situation may have normalized by September this year, hopefully in many regions, others may still be affected. As an international symposium, we need our congress to be open to our participants wherever they are located, but at this point it is not possible to predict whether we will still have travel bans and whether borders will be closed somewhere in the world.
We also considered the economic situation of our participants which will be severely disrupted, so that very few of us will have time or money, or will be in the mood to travel and leave our practice in September for our Congress.
We very much hope that you will still join us in 2021.
Dirk Richter, MD
