National Centers for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America.
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Aug 5;16(8):e0255631. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255631. eCollection 2021.
During an Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, calculating the exposure window of a confirmed case can assist field investigators in identifying the source of infection and establishing chains of transmission. However, field investigators often have difficulty calculating this window. We developed a bilingual (English/French), smartphone-based field application to assist field investigators in determining the exposure window of an EVD case. The calculator only requires the reported date of symptoms onset and the type of symptoms present at onset or the date of death. Prior to the release of this application, there was no similar electronic capability to enable consistent calculation of EVD exposure windows for field investigators. The Democratic Republic of the Congo Ministry of Health endorsed the application and incorporated it into trainings for field staff. Available for Apple and Android devices, the calculator continues to be downloaded even as the eastern DRC outbreak resolved. We rapidly developed and implemented a smartphone application to estimate the exposure window for EVD cases in an outbreak setting.
在埃博拉病毒病（EVD）疫情期间，计算确诊病例的暴露窗口有助于现场调查人员确定感染源并建立传播链。然而，现场调查人员往往难以计算这一窗口。我们开发了一种双语（英语/法语）的智能手机现场应用程序，以帮助现场调查人员确定 EVD 病例的暴露窗口。该计算器仅需要报告的症状发作日期和发病时出现的症状类型或死亡日期。在发布此应用程序之前，现场调查人员没有类似的电子功能来一致计算 EVD 暴露窗口。刚果民主共和国卫生部认可了该应用程序，并将其纳入了现场工作人员的培训中。该计算器可用于苹果和安卓设备，即使在刚果民主共和国东部疫情得到解决后，它仍在继续被下载。我们迅速开发并实施了一款智能手机应用程序，以估算疫情爆发环境中 EVD 病例的暴露窗口。
