Participatory syndromic surveillance as a tool for tracking COVID-19 in Bangladesh.

ABSTRACT: Limitations in laboratory diagnostic capacity and reporting delays have hampered efforts to mitigate and control the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic globally. To augment traditional lab and hospital-based surveillance, Bangladesh established a participatory surveillance system for the public to self-report symptoms consistent with COVID-19 through multiple channels. Here, we report on the use of this system, which received over 3 million responses within two months, for tracking the COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh. Although we observe considerable noise in the data and initial volatility in the use of the different reporting mechanisms, the self-reported syndromic data exhibits a strong association with lab-confirmed cases at a local scale. Moreover, the syndromic data

SUBMITTER: Mahmud AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8054699 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature