Surveillance for Newly Emerging Viruses

Surveillance is a fundamental tool for public health, producing information to guide actions. Modern surveillance tends to follow health measures such as the incidence of a disease or syndrome or even the occurrence of health-related behaviors. There are many reasons for conducting surveillance, and the data collected and the approach taken to analyzing those data are both influenced by the overall goal of a surveillance system. Surveillance systems aims mainly at detection also provide information that may be useful for other purposes. The goal of detecting an outbreak of a newly emerging virus, places specific demands on the type of data collected and the types of analysis performed. All approaches to surveillance share some common principles. While some of the underlying methods used in public health surveillance have evolved considerably in recent years, the general approach to surveillance has remained relatively constant. At a fundamental level, surveillance aims to (1) identify individual cases, (2) detect population patterns in identified cases, and then (3) convey information to decision-makers about population health patterns.