Monitoring the epidemic

Stable and adequate monitoring, that ensures the opportunity for of timely response

Current level of epidemic management

Epidemic surveillance can:

  • Determine the spread and infection rate of the virus (waste-water monitoring covers 70 percent of the population).
  • Assess the severity of the disease.
  • Identify outbreaks.
  • Detect and assess risks of new variants (up to 4000 weekly sequencing + international signals).
  • Monitor reinfections and waning immunity (especially through international signals).
  • Monitor vaccine coverage.
  • Monitor hospital capacity.
  • Determine expectations for future waves.

Escalation of epidemic management

  • Monitoring becomes more detailed, in line with increased testing activity (especially national monitoring of virus variants, reinfections and waning immunity are improved)

Recommendations from the health authorities

  • Adequate epidemic monitoring is a prerequisite for carrying out risk assessments that support effective epidemic management.
  • Need for a sufficient and scalable number of PCR tests. PCR is a prerequisite for whole genome sequencing samples to identify and assess risks from virus variants, to monitor reinfections and to monitor waning immunity and severity. Epidemic monitoring must therefore be seen in the context of a PCR testing strategy.
  • Alternative monitoring systems and data sources are used during lower testing activity, this includes waste-water monitoring and sentinel monitoring in relation to the determination of the infections rate, while these are not suitable for monitoring new virus variants.
  • At the same time, there is an ongoing monitoring of the morbidity of inpatients with covid-19 or other infectious diseases such as influenza. This monitoring is crucial in the assessment of the overall epidemiological situation.

8 focus areas of the strategy

Monitoring the epidemic