Timely identification of arboviral disease is key to prevent transmission in the community, but traditional surveillance may take up to 14 days between specimen collection and health department notification. Arizona state and county health agencies began monitoring National Syndromic Surveillance Program BioSense 2.0 data for patients infected with West Nile virus (WNV), St. Louis encephalitis virus (SLEV), chikungunya, or dengue virus in August 2015. Zika virus was added in April 2016. Our novel methods were presented at the International Society for Disease Surveillance 2015 Annual Conference. Twice per week, we queried patient records from 15 Maricopa County BioSense-enrolled emergency department and inpatient hospitals for chief complaint keywords and discharge diagnosis codes. Our Case Investigation Decision Tree helped us determine whether records had a high or low degree of evidence for arboviral disease and necessitated further investigation. This study evaluated how Arizonaâs protocol for conducting syndromic surveillance compared to traditional arboviral surveillance in terms of accuracy and timeliness in Maricopa County from August 2015 through December 2016.
Objective:
To evaluate Arizonaâs arboviral syndromic surveillance protocol in Maricopa County.