Early Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic Waves: Lessons from the Syndromic Surveillance in Lombardy, Italy.

ABSTRACT: We evaluated the performance of the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) model for comparing two families of predictors (i.e., structured and unstructured data from visits to the emergency department (ED)) for the early detection of SARS-CoV-2 epidemic waves. The study included data from 1,282,100 ED visits between 1 January 2011 and 9 December 2021 to a local health unit in Lombardy, Italy. A regression model with an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) error term was fitted. EWMA residual charts were then plotted to detect outliers in the frequency of the daily ED visits made due to the presence of a respiratory syndrome (based on coded diagnoses) or respiratory symptoms (based on free text data). Alarm signals were compared with the number of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 inf

SUBMITTER: Bagarella G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9565943 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature