The 2025 EARS-Net external quality assessment (EQA) summary report has been published
The EARS-Net EQA exercises aim to:
- Assess the quality of species identification by participating laboratories;
- Assess the accuracy of the qualitative antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) results reported by participating laboratories; and
- Evaluate the overall comparability of routinely collected AST results between laboratories and EU/EEA countries.
In 2025, 977 laboratories received a package containing 6 swabs for analysis, and 895 clinical laboratories submitted results for analysis. In total 4,932 species identification results were evaluated, and 99.7% were correct. Similarly, 56,924 AST results were evaluated, and 94.4% were correct.
Overall, the 2025 EARS-Net EQA exercise results did not show a systematic overestimation or underestimation of antimicrobial resistance in the EU/EEA.
Read the report (PDF).