Euro Surveill . Detecting early signals of COVID-19 outbreaks in 2020 in small areas by monitoring healthcare utilisation databases: first lessons learned from the Italian Alert_CoV project

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Euro Surveill


. 2023 Jan;28(1).
doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2023.28.1.2200366.
Detecting early signals of COVID-19 outbreaks in 2020 in small areas by monitoring healthcare utilisation databases: first lessons learned from the Italian Alert_CoV project


Ivan Merlo ¹ , Mariano Crea ² , Paolo Berta ¹ , Francesca Ieva ^{3 4 5} , Flavia Carle ^{6 4} , Federico Rea ^{4 1} , Gloria Porcu ¹ , Laura Savaré ^{3 4 5} , Raul De Maio ⁷ , Marco Villa ⁸ , Danilo Cereda ⁹ , Olivia Leoni ⁹ , Francesco Bortolan ⁹ , Giuseppe Maria Sechi ¹⁰ , Antonino Bella ¹¹ , Patrizio Pezzotti ¹¹ , Silvio Brusaferro ¹¹ , Gian Carlo Blangiardo ² , Massimo Fedeli ² , Giovanni Corrao ^{9 4 1} ; Italian Alert_CoV Project group ¹²



Affiliations

• PMID: 36695448
• DOI: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2023.28.1.2200366

Abstract

BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, large-scale diagnostic testing and contact tracing have proven insufficient to promptly monitor the spread of infections.AimTo develop and retrospectively evaluate a system identifying aberrations in the use of selected healthcare services to timely detect COVID-19 outbreaks in small areas.MethodsData were retrieved from the healthcare utilisation (HCU) databases of the Lombardy Region, Italy. We identified eight services suggesting a respiratory infection (syndromic proxies). Count time series reporting the weekly occurrence of each proxy from 2015 to 2020 were generated considering small administrative areas (i.e. census units of Cremona and Mantua provinces). The ability to uncover aberrations during 2020 was tested for two algorithms: the improved Farrington algorithm and the generalised likelihood ratio-based procedure for negative binomial counts. To evaluate these algorithms' performance in detecting outbreaks earlier than the standard surveillance, confirmed outbreaks, defined according to the weekly number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, were used as reference. Performances were assessed separately for the first and second semester of the year. Proxies positively impacting performance were identified.ResultsWe estimated that 70% of outbreaks could be detected early using the proposed approach, with a corresponding false positive rate of ca 20%. Performance did not substantially differ either between algorithms or semesters. The best proxies included emergency calls for respiratory or infectious disease causes and emergency room visits.ConclusionImplementing HCU-based monitoring systems in small areas deserves further investigations as it could facilitate the containment of COVID-19 and other unknown infectious diseases in the future.

Keywords: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19); early outbreak detection; healthcare utilisation; healthcare utilisation databases; small areas; syndromic surveillance.