Syndromic surveillance and its utilisation for mass gatherings

Tremendous advancements in syndromic surveillance strategies over the last two decades, and specifically from prior mass gatherings, have been incorporated into day-to-day healthcare analysis worldwide and have left a lasting indirect impact since their inception. Mass gatherings are a daily occurrence worldwide and provide a scenario ripe for public health aims and objectives utilising syndromic surveillance. Europe is less than a decade away from hosting a colossal worldwide gathering (2024 Summer Olympics) in likely a time when the global agreement is in flux. A call to arms is needed for additional surveillance strategies incorporating mobile application symptom checker data, telemedicine, social media and social data sensing. There remains a need for an optimal combination of real-time data sensing that captures the whole population, but to reach that goal we must incorporate new advancements into baseline epidemiologic data monitoring, otherwise we will be tracking real-time mass gathering events on top of inaccurate baseline epidemiologic data.