Department of Infectious Diseases, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore; Department of Infection Prevention and Epidemiology, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore.
Department of Infection Prevention and Epidemiology, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore.
Am J Infect Control. 2021 Jun;49(6):685-689. doi: 10.1016/j.ajic.2020.11.003. Epub 2020 Nov 4.
Since December 2019, COVID-19 has caused a worldwide pandemic and Singapore has seen escalating cases with community spread. Aggressive contact tracing and identification of suspects has helped to identify local community clusters, surveillance being the key to early intervention. Healthcare workers (HCWs) have contracted COVID-19 infection both at the workplace and community. We aimed to create a prototype staff surveillance system for the detection of acute respiratory infection (ARI) clusters amongst our HCWs and describe its effectiveness.
A prototypical surveillance system was built on existing electronic health record infrastructure.
Over a 10-week period, we investigated 10 ARI clusters amongst 7 departments. One of the ARI clusters was later determined to be related to COVID-19 infection. We demonstrate the feasibility of syndromic surveillance to detect ARI clusters during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The use of syndromic surveillance to detect ARI clusters amongst HCWs in the COVID-19 pandemic may enable early case detection and prevent onward transmission. It could be an important tool in infection prevention within healthcare institutions.
自 2019 年 12 月以来，COVID-19 已在全球范围内引发大流行，新加坡的社区传播病例不断增加。积极的接触者追踪和疑似病例的识别有助于发现本地社区集群，监测是早期干预的关键。医护人员（HCWs）在工作场所和社区都感染了 COVID-19。我们旨在为我们的 HCWs 创建一个用于检测急性呼吸道感染（ARI）集群的原型员工监测系统，并描述其有效性。
在现有的电子健康记录基础设施上构建了原型监测系统。
在 10 周的时间里，我们调查了 7 个部门的 10 个 ARI 集群。其中一个 ARI 集群后来被确定与 COVID-19 感染有关。我们证明了在 COVID-19 爆发期间使用症状监测来检测 ARI 集群的可行性。
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，使用症状监测来检测 HCWs 中的 ARI 集群可能有助于早期发现病例并防止传播。它可能是医疗机构内感染预防的重要工具。
