Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic took most countries by surprise with relatively little preparedness in terms of equipment, disease diagnostic tools, or decision-support systems. Based on the experience of being at the forefront of the Covid-19 pandemic management in Belgium, the talk will describe and discuss the most important challenges in terms of public communication and decision support. More specifically, the talk will address the multiple consequences of a low general proficiency in health sciences in the public and decision makers, the difficulty in handling rapidly changing data and knowledge while maintaining good levels of trust, the critical need to carefully organize the much-needed scientific debate, and the overall conditions of an effective collaboration between scientists, decision makers and the media in the context of a crisis.