Mitigating infectious diseases in Mizoram - A lesson from COVID-19

COVID-19 pandemic has created huge havoc in public health in India and across the world. One among the small states of India, Mizoram lies between Bangladesh and Myanmar compelling a transmission risk of various infectious diseases across the boundary. The responsibilities of the authority to establish a screening and diagnostic laboratory is crucial to identify the infectious etiological agents, control, prevent morbidity, mortality, and burden of the diseases. We aim to discuss the need for an infectious disease surveillance system, the importance and role of advanced diagnostic and research laboratory in Mizoram, learning from SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Epidemiological characteristics and the entire evolution of coronavirus disease 2019 in Wuhan, China

Background Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly around the world. We aimed to describe the epidemiological characteristics and the entire evolution of COVID-19 in Wuhan, and to evaluate the effect of non-pharmaceutical intervention by the government. Methods The information of COVID-19 cases until Mar 18, 2020 in Wuhan were collected from the national infectious disease surveillance system in Hubei province. Results A total of 49,973 confirmed cases were reported until Mar 18, 2020 in Wuhan. Among whom, 2496 cases died and the overall mortality was 5.0%. Most confirmed cases (25,619, 51.3%) occurred during Jan 23 to Feb 4, with a spike on Feb 1 (new cases, 3374). The number of daily new cases started to decrease steadily on Feb 19 (new cases, 301) and decreased greatly on Mar 1 (new cases, 57). However, the mortality and the proportion of severe and critical cases has been decreasing over time, with the lowest of 2.0 and 10.1% during Feb 16 to Mar 18, 2020, respectively. The percentage of severe and critical cases among all cases was 19.6%, and the percentage of critical and dead cases aged over 60 was 70.1 and 82.0%, respectively. Conclusion The number of new cases has dropped significantly after the government taking the isolation of four types of personnel and the community containment for 14 days. Our results indicate that the mortality and proportion of severe and critical cases gradually decreased over time, and critical and dead cases are more incline to be older individuals.

Infectious disease surveillance system descriptors: proposal for a comprehensive set

To tailor a surveillance system to its objectives and to evaluate its fitness for purpose, an accurate description of its structural elements is essential. Existing recommendations for setting up a system seldom offer a comprehensive list of all surveillance elements to be considered. Moreover, there is sometimes confusion in the way terms describing these elements are interpreted. The objective of this paper is to propose a comprehensive set of surveillance system descriptors that can delineate the important elements and clarify the meaning of the terms used. We identified 20 descriptors that we classified in five categories: (i) surveillance scheme; (ii) population and cases; (iii) supplementary data; (iv) information flow; and (v) period of time. We tried to make the definitions of these descriptors as clear and simple as possible to avoid confusion or misinterpretation of the terms used. The relative importance of each element may vary depending on the objectives of the surveillance scheme. Surveillance descriptors should be reviewed periodically to document changes and to assess if the system continues to be fit for purpose. Together with the minimum requirements for variables and the planned outputs for disseminating the data, the surveillance descriptors can be used to define surveillance standards.

Using National Health Insurance Claims Data to Supplement Notifiable Infectious Disease Surveillance System

This study will determine opportunity of using the National Health Insurance (NHI) claims data for supplemental notifiable infectious disease surveillance system at national or regional levels.

Selecting Essential Information for Biosurveillance - A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

This paper proposes the use of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory to address the issue of identifying and selecting essential information for inclusion into a biosurveillance system or process. We developed a decision support framework that can facilitate identifying data streams for use in biosurveillance systems or processes and demonstrated utility by applying the framework to the problem of evaluating data streams for use in an global infectious disease surveillance system.