Ben Moussa Myriam, Rahal Abbas, Lee Liza, Mukhi Shamir
Centre for Emerging and Respiratory Infections and Pandemic Preparedness, Public Health Agency of Canada, Ottawa, ON.
Canadian Network for Public Health Intelligence, National Microbiology Laboratory, Edmonton, AB.
Can Commun Dis Rep. 2023 Nov 1;49(11-12):501-509. doi: 10.14745/ccdr.v49i1112a06.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the need for robust surveillance of respiratory viruses. Syndromic surveillance continues to be an important surveillance component recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). While FluWatchers, Canada's syndromic surveillance system, has been in place since 2015, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a valuable opportunity to expand the program's scope and underlying technology infrastructure. Following some structural changes to FluWatchers syndromic questionnaire, participants are now able to contribute valuable data to the non-specific surveillance of respiratory virus activity across Canada. This article examines the performance of FluWatchers' syndromic surveillance over the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. More specifically, this article examines FluWatchers' performance with respect to the correlation between the FluWatchers influenza-like illness (ILI) and acute respiratory infection (ARI) indicators and total respiratory virus detections (RVDs) in Canada, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and other respiratory viruses.
2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行凸显了对呼吸道病毒进行有力监测的必要性。症状监测仍然是世界卫生组织（WHO）推荐的一项重要监测内容。加拿大的症状监测系统“流感监测者”自2015年就已建立，而COVID-19大流行提供了一个宝贵机会，可扩大该项目的范围和基础技术基础设施。对“流感监测者”症状调查问卷进行了一些结构调整后，参与者现在能够为加拿大全国呼吸道病毒活动的非特异性监测提供有价值的数据。本文考察了加拿大COVID-19大流行三年期间“流感监测者”症状监测的表现。更具体地说，本文考察了“流感监测者”的流感样疾病（ILI）和急性呼吸道感染（ARI）指标与加拿大总的呼吸道病毒检测（RVD）之间的相关性，其中包括流感、呼吸道合胞病毒（RSV）、严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）以及其他呼吸道病毒。
