People usually celebrate holidays by inviting family and friends to have food at home, or by gathering and eating at restaurants or in other public venues. This increased exposure to food with a common source can create conditions for outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses. Holidays can also be targeted by bioterrorists who seek to maximize physical damage, psychological impact, and publicity around dates of patriotic or religious significance. They might aim at contaminating food and water supplies, especially with CDC-defined category B agents that can cause diseases such as salmonellosis, shigellosis, cholera, crytosporidiosis, as well as infections with Escherichia coli O157:H7 and the Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens. Hence, there is a need to quantify whether gastrointestinal illnesses increase around holidays. This can also help determine a baseline of the incidence to which future holiday periods should be compared to. This research does not focus on specific reportable diseases. That will be the purpose of forthcoming research. Instead, ED visits with gastrointestinal symptoms are used to leverage the capability of syndromic surveillance for early detection.
Objective
To quantify Emergency Department (ED) visits with gastrointestinal symptoms during Federal holidays in Miami-Dade.