On 24 March 2022, the European Transcultural Nursing Association (ETNA) delivered its first virtual conference titled ‘Global nursing, midwifery and social care responses and challenges to Covid-19 pandemic during 2020-21’. As the president of ETNA, I invited speakers from every continent to address the focus of the conference from the lens of their national culture, emphasizing challenges and responses of their choice. It was no surprise that they all spoke about the enormity of this health catastrophe that caught everyone unprepared. They all spoke about the confusion and the lack of guidance and resources, but surprisingly, they all spoke about the existence of inequalities, discrimination and exclusion, all of which are inextricably linked to cultural competence (http://europeantransculturalnurses.eu/conference/).