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The UK statutory notification system for infectious diseases is a system whereby doctors are required to notify a "proper officer" of the local authority if they are presented with a case of a serious infectious disease such as diphtheria or measles. The proper officer then sends a report to the Centre for Infections of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in Colindale, north London.
In public health, contact tracing is the process of identification of persons who may have come into contact with an infected person ("contacts") and subsequent collection of further information about these contacts. By tracing the contacts of infected individuals, testing them for infection, isolating or treating the infected and tracing their contacts in turn, public health aims to reduce infections in the population. Diseases for which contact tracing is commonly performed for include tuberculosis, vaccine-preventable infections like measles, sexually transmitted infections, blood-borne infections, ebola, some serious bacterial infections, and novel infections. The goals of contact tracing are:
Public health surveillance is, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), "the continuous, systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of health-related data needed for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice." Public health surveillance may be used to track emerging health-related issues at an early stage and find active solutions in a timely manner. Surveillance systems are generally called upon to provide information regarding when and where health problems are occurring and who is affected.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is an independent agency of the European Union (EU) whose mission is to strengthen Europe's defences against infectious diseases. The Centre was established in 2004 and is located in Solna, Sweden.
Public health informatics has been defined as the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practice, research, and learning. It is one of the subdomains of health informatics.
Disease surveillance is an epidemiological practice by which the spread of disease is monitored in order to establish patterns of progression. The main role of disease surveillance is to predict, observe, and minimize the harm caused by outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic situations, as well as increase knowledge about which factors contribute to such circumstances. A key part of modern disease surveillance is the practice of disease case reporting.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, formed in 1946, is the leading national public health institute of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Its main goal is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the US and internationally.
Influenza-like illness (ILI), also known as flu-like syndrome/symptoms, is a medical diagnosis of possible influenza or other illness causing a set of common symptoms.
A notifiable disease is one which that has to be reported to the government authorities as required by law. In Sweden, over 50 diseases are classified as notifiable. The notifiable diseases come under four categories : notifiable, mandatory contact tracing required, dangerous to public health (allmänsfarliga) and dangerous to the society (samhällsfarliga). As per the Swedish law, notifiable diseases should be reported by the laboratories, doctor treating the patient or performing autopsy. The report is sent through an electronic system called SmiNet to the Public Health Agency of Sweden. As of January 2018, the only three diseases classified as dangerous to society are small pox, Ebola and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
The National Virus Reference Laboratory (NVRL) is located in UCD, Dublin, Ireland and is affiliated to the University College Dublin School of Medicine. The NVRL provides a diagnostic and reference service for clinicians in Ireland investigating viral infections. For over forty years, the NVRL have provided a virology diagnostic service to the Irish health service.
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) is part of the Irish Health Service Executive. HPSC was set up in 1998 and was formerly known as the National Disease Surveillance Centre (NDSC).
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei, China, and has resulted in an ongoing pandemic. The first confirmed case has been traced back to 17 November 2019 in Hubei. As of 28 July 2020, more than 16.4 million cases have been reported across 188 countries and territories, resulting in more than 654,000 deaths. More than 9.57 million people have recovered.
COVID-19 testing involves analyzing samples to assess the current or past presence of SARS-CoV-2. The two main branches detect either the presence of the virus or of antibodies produced in response to infection. Tests for viral presence are used to diagnose individual cases and to allow public health authorities to trace and contain outbreaks. Antibody tests instead show whether someone once had the disease. They are less useful for diagnosing current infections because antibodies may not develop for weeks after infection. It is used to assess disease prevalence, which aids the estimation of the infection fatality rate.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden is part of the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus was confirmed to have reached Sweden on 31 January 2020, when a woman returning from Wuhan tested positive. On 26 February, following outbreaks in Italy and in Iran, multiple travel-related clusters appeared in Sweden. Community transmission was confirmed on 9 March in the Stockholm region. Since then, individuals in every län (county) have tested positive for COVID-19. The first death was reported on 11 March in Stockholm, a case of community transmission. However, it's believed that the virus could have reached Sweden as early as December 2019, when several individuals sought care for respiratory illness in Falun after contact with an individual with recent travel history to Wuhan.
COVID-19 surveillance involves monitoring the spread of the coronavirus disease in order to establish the patterns of disease progression. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends active surveillance, with focus of case finding, testing and contact tracing in all transmission scenarios. COVID-19 surveillance is expected to monitor epidemiological trends, rapidly detect new cases, and based on this information, provide epidemiological information to conduct risk assessment and guide disease preparedness.
The Pandemic Severity Assessment Framework (PSAF) is an evaluation framework which uses quadrants to evaluate both the transmissibility and clinical severity of a pandemic and to combine these into an overall impact estimate. Clinical severity is calculated via multiple measures including case fatality rate, case-hospitalization ratios, and deaths-hospitalizations ratios, while viral transmissibility is measured via available data among secondary household attack rates, school attack rates, workplace attack rates, community attack rates, rates of emergency department and outpatient visits for influenza-like illness. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adopted the PSAF as its official pandemic severity assessment tool in 2014, and it was the official pandemic severity assessment tool listed in the CDC's National Pandemic Strategy at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The PSAF superseded the 2007 linear Pandemic Severity Index, which assumed 30% spread and measured case fatality rate (CFR) to assess the severity and evolution of the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its spread in Europe has had significant effects on some major EU members countries and on European Union institutions, especially in the areas of finance, civil liberties, and relations between member states.
Sentinel surveillance is the "monitoring of rate of occurrence of specific conditions to assess the stability or change in health levels of a population". It also describes the study of disease rates in a specific cohort such as a geographic area or subgroup to estimate trends in a larger population.
Paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome (PMIS), or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), is a systemic disease involving persistent fever, inflammation and organ dysfunction following exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19.
FluNet is a global web-based tool launched in 1997 and coordinated by the World Health Organization. It is a site for information exchange in the global surveillance of influenza. FluNet contains publicly available, real-time global data for influenza virological surveillance. It works as an early-alert system, providing with full access to epidemiological and virological information. FluNet is a collaborative project between the WHO's Division of Emerging and other Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Control, and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).
References
- 1 2 "SmiNet" . Retrieved 5 April 2020.
- 1 2 3 Rolfhamre, P; Jansson, A; Arneborn, M; Ekdahl, K (2006). "SmiNet-2: Description of an internet-based surveillance system for communicable diseases in Sweden". Euro Surveillance. 11 (5): 103–7. PMID 16757847.
- ↑ "COVID-19". internetmedicin.se. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
- ↑ "The Chlamydia surveillance system in Sweden delivers relevant and accurate data: results from the system evaluation, 1997-2008" (PDF). Retrieved 5 April 2020.Cite journal requires
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