Identifying the outbreak signal of COVID-19 before the response of the traditional disease monitoring system.

Synopsis Early identification of the emergence of an outbreak of a novel infectious disease is critical to generating a timely response. The traditional monitoring system is adequate for detecting the outbreak of common diseases; however, it is insufficient for the discovery of novel infectious dise...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
Main Authors: Yaoyao Dai, Jianming Wang
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0008758
https://doaj.org/article/d04fee84434e48f0beb76278506073a0
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Summary:Synopsis Early identification of the emergence of an outbreak of a novel infectious disease is critical to generating a timely response. The traditional monitoring system is adequate for detecting the outbreak of common diseases; however, it is insufficient for the discovery of novel infectious diseases. In this study, we used COVID-19 as an example to compare the delay time of different tools for identifying disease outbreaks. The results showed that both the abnormal spike in influenza-like illnesses and the peak of online searches of key terms could provide early signals. We emphasize the importance of testing these findings and discussing the broader potential to use syndromic surveillance, internet searches, and social media data together with traditional disease surveillance systems for early detection and understanding of novel emerging infectious diseases.