Evaluation of a Digital Tool to Collect COVID-19 Surveillance Data

The timely collection and dissemination of public health surveillance data is crucial in infectious disease outbreak control. Traditional methods of collecting surveillance data through telephone interviews aimed at source and contact tracing can be vulnerable during an epidemic with rapidly increasing cases. To address this, we introduced a digital questionnaire that allowed for the timely retrieval of essential surveillance data.

This study evaluates the response rate and timeliness of the collection of surveillance data from COVID-19-positive individuals using this method and compares the demographic characteristics of responders and non-responders.

The study involved 3240 individuals who tested positive on the COVID-19 laboratory test and were sent a digital questionnaire. Results show that a majority responded the same day (>80%), making it noninferior to conventional (telephonic) COVID-19 surveillance data collection in terms of speed.

Our collection method yields responses from all genders, ages, and socioeconomic groups, including individuals with and without a history of COVID-19, and those tested by both the Public Health Service and third-party test sites. This allows personnel to focus on other priorities such as delivering health education and outbreak management. However, this method has limitations: it is ineffective for individuals without an email address, those facing language barriers, and cases where employers provided their own email addresses instead of the individual's email address. Future research into the quality of the answers provided in a digital questionnaire and its use in surveillance data collection for other infectious diseases is necessary.