Lessons from COVID-19 syndromic surveillance through emergency department activity: a prospective time series study from western Switzerland.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

We aimed to assess if emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 outbreak could have improved our surveillance system.

Design and settings

We did an observational study using aggregated data from the ED of a university hospital and public health authorities in western Switzerland.

Participants

All patients admitted to the ED were included.

Primary outcome measure

The main outcome was intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy. We used time series methods for ED syndromic surveillance (influenza-like syndrome, droplet isolation) and usual indicators from public health authorities (new cases, proportion of positive tests in the population).

Results

Based on 37 319 ED visits during the COVID-19 outb

SUBMITTER: Ageron FX 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9082728 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature