Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 11/9/2025; Author: Elma Murić
A question from a Member of the European Parliament regarding the nature of a simulation exercise from February 2019 sparked the spread of a conspiracy theory claiming that the European Commission and the ECDC had “rehearsed” the Covid-19 pandemic months before the disease emerged.
On August 27, 2025, a lengthy Facebook post was shared implying that European Union institutions secretly prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic before it began. The post claimed that “the European Commission was forced to admit that a secret simulation exercise, ‘Blue Orchid,’ was held in 2019.”
Just a few months before the outbreak of COVID-19, the European Commission and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) rehearsed a pandemic scenario in February 2019.
The post further claims that the previously unknown “Blue Orchid” simulation was uncovered thanks to “a parliamentary inquiry by FPÖ representative Gerald Hauser,” and that in an official response, the European Commission confirmed for the first time that the “Blue Orchid” exercise was conducted on February 8, 2019, together with the ECDC. It also says that the goal of the exercise was to test mechanisms and communication channels in crisis management, and that in March of that year, “further workshops on pandemic preparedness followed, during which national strategies were coordinated.”
It also states the following:
The proximity of Event 201 and the coronavirus pandemic
The timing is explosive: in October 2019, the well-known “Event 201” simulated the outbreak of a SARS coronavirus in the United States. Just a few months later, the WHO declared the Covid-19 pandemic. Were the key players already firmly expecting a global crisis back then?
The post also claims that MEP Gerald Hauser stated that the European Commission’s (EC) response to his “question on pandemic preparedness leaves key questions unanswered,” and that so far no public documents or reports on the exercise have been found, either from the ECDC or the European Commission. It adds that this “leaves open questions about which scenarios were rehearsed and whether any concrete measures resulted.”
Identical posts were shared the same day by the Facebook pages Građansko buđenje and WDD Bihać (1, 2). In the following days, the same claims were spread by other users of this social media as well (1, 2).
An article titled “The European Commission admitted to a secret pandemic simulation exercise in 2019 – Event 201” was also published on Arna Šebalj’s page on August 31, 2025. Except for the headline, this article does not mention the European Commission at all, and the text is entirely focused on “Event 201”, a pandemic simulation exercise held on October 18, 2019, in New York.
What are the Facts?
The Facebook post about the European Commission’s alleged “admission” that the “Blue Orchid” exercise was held is actually a translation of an article published on the Austrian portal Exxpress on August 27, 2025. The claims in the article are based on correspondence, i.e., questions that Austrian MEP and far-right FPÖ member Gerald Hauser submitted to the European Commission, and the Commission’s response to one of his inquiries.
The contents of these inquiries and the EC’s response were published on the Commission’s website. On the page titled “Preparedness for the Covid-19 pandemic”, Hauser’s question from March 11, 2025, can be found, in which he asked the European Commission several things, including whether the EC and its agencies participated in pandemic simulation and preparatory exercises (Atlantic Storm, CLADE X, Event 201 and Spars Pandemic 2025-2028) in the United States or in any other similar exercises.
He also asked “when the Commission and its agencies (especially EMA and ECDC) knew that a pandemic would break out in 2020,” as well as “in what form (human, financial, material, ideological, etc.) the Commission provided support for pandemic preparedness simulation exercises”.
A public response to these questions was issued on June 30, 2025, by Oliver Várhelyi, European Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare. In his response, Várhelyi stated that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published its first rapid risk assessment titled “Cluster of pneumonia cases caused by a novel coronavirus, Wuhan, China, 2020” on January 17, 2020, and a second update of this rapid risk assessment on January 26, 2020. In this assessment, “the potential impact of the 2019-nCoV outbreaks was assessed as high, and further global spread as likely, warning of the possibility of a pandemic.”
The response also stated the following:
Neither the Commission, nor the ECDC, nor the European Medicines Agency were involved in or participated in the simulation exercises (Atlantic Storm, CLADE X, Event 201, and Spars Pandemic 2025-2028). Therefore, the EC cannot comment on them.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the EC routinely organized capacity-building activities to prepare for possible cross-border health threats. These included training on prevention, preparedness, and response to cross-border health threats, contingency planning for animal diseases and zoonoses, and simulation exercises focused on rapid risk assessment of chemical threats.
Furthermore, the EC and ECDC organized the “Blue Orchid” exercise to test the crisis management functions, procedures, and communication channels between the EC and the ECDC. In March 2019, they also held regional expert workshops on pandemic preparedness planning in order to coordinate national approaches used by EU/EEA countries in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of pandemic (influenza) preparedness plans.
It was also noted that on June 2, 2014, the ECDC published a Handbook on simulation exercises in public health institutions in the EU.
On July 29, 2025, Hauser submitted a new inquiry to the European Commission, stating that despite the official confirmation of the exercise “Blue Orchid,” no publicly available information on it can be found. Accordingly, he asked what the key elements and scenarios of this exercise were, what conclusions were drawn, and where the public can find information about what it covered, which institutions were involved, and what its results were.
At the time of writing this analysis, the European Commission had not yet published answers to Hauser’s questions regarding the “Blue Orchid” simulation exercise.
It is true, therefore, that the European Commission confirmed the exercise took place, and that no details about it are currently available. However, in its response to Hauser, the Commission clearly emphasized that it was an exercise to test crisis management functions, procedures, and communication channels between the EC and the ECDC.
It is important to stress that these are not unusual procedures, and the European Commission’s website notes that prevention, preparedness, and response planning are key elements for effective monitoring, early warning, and combating serious cross-border health threats, and are part of the EU’s health security framework. Regulation (EU) 2022/2371 requires the European Commission to develop an EU prevention, preparedness, and response plan. Prior to this, Regulation 1082/2013/EU was in force, in which preparedness and response planning was also marked as essential.
The European Commission, on its website, also emphasizes the following:
(…) the EU’s actions to strengthen preparedness include regular exercises to test existing procedures within preparedness plans at both EU and national level.
Through the EU Health Programme, support is provided via training and exercises, facilitating the exchange of experiences, guidelines, and procedures among Member States.
Fact-checking of these false claims in Facebook posts in September this year was also carried out by the fact-checking platform Raskrinkavanje from Montenegro. In their analysis, they highlighted, among other things, that information and materials on earlier simulation exercises conducted by the ECDC to test different responses to health crises can indeed be found on ECDC’s website. It should also be noted that in June 2023, the ECDC organized a workshop in Sweden on simulation exercises aimed at strengthening response capacity to infectious disease events, testing preparedness plans, and strategies.
It is clear, therefore, that contrary to claims made on social media, the European Commission and the ECDC did not “rehearse a scenario” of the pandemic that emerged a year later in February 2019, but rather tested procedures and communication between the two bodies in the event of a health crisis.
The European Commission also emphasized in its response to Hauser that the institution itself, the EMA, and the ECDC did not participate in simulation exercises and activities in the US.
Nevertheless, the EC’s confirmation of the “Blue Orchid” exercise was manipulatively linked in the viral post to unfounded conspiracy theorist claims that the “Event 201” simulation, held in the US in 2019, was designed to “plan” the Covid-19 pandemic. Raskrinkavanje has repeatedly reported on this conspiracy theory in the past, noting that claims that this event “predicted” or “planned” the Covid-19 pandemic are not based on facts (1, 2, 3). This simulation exercise was based on a fictional pandemic scenario, and fictitious input data were also used to model the potential impact.
Accordingly, we rate the claim that European institutions rehearsed the Covid-19 pandemic several months before the disease appeared as a conspiracy theory. We give the same rating to the claim that the “Event 201” exercise simulated the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.The headline of the article on Arna Šebalj’s website, which claims that the European Commission admitted to a secret pandemic simulation exercise, is rated as manipulation of facts and conspiracy theory.
