School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Science. 2021 May 28;372(6545):990-995. doi: 10.1126/science.abf0874. Epub 2021 Apr 23.
Surveillance of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has mainly relied on case reporting, which is biased by health service performance, test availability, and test-seeking behaviors. We report a community-wide national representative surveillance program in England based on self-administered swab results from ~594,000 individuals tested for SARS-CoV-2, regardless of symptoms, between May and the beginning of September 2020. The epidemic declined between May and July 2020 but then increased gradually from mid-August, accelerating into early September 2020 at the start of the second wave. When compared with cases detected through routine surveillance, we report here a longer period of decline and a younger age distribution. Representative community sampling for SARS-CoV-2 can substantially improve situational awareness and feed into the public health response even at low prevalence.
对严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2）大流行的监测主要依赖于病例报告，而病例报告受到卫生服务绩效、检测可用性和检测寻求行为的影响。我们报告了一项在英格兰进行的基于社区的全国代表性监测计划，该计划基于 2020 年 5 月至 9 月初约 59.4 万名接受 SARS-CoV-2 检测的个体的自我管理拭子结果，无论症状如何。2020 年 5 月至 7 月期间，疫情有所下降，但从 8 月中旬开始逐渐上升，在 9 月初第二波疫情开始时加速上升。与通过常规监测发现的病例相比，我们在这里报告了更长的下降期和更年轻的年龄分布。即使在低流行率的情况下，对 SARS-CoV-2 进行有代表性的社区抽样也可以大大提高对疫情的了解，并为公共卫生应对提供信息。
