Evaluation of the quality of epidemiological surveillance reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: The Weekly Epidemiological Surveillance Report (WESR) is an academic report produced by the Department of Disease Control Thailand, which summarizes the epidemiological surveillance reports processed weekly. The objective of this study was to assess the delays in reporting priority diseases based on published data in WESR reports.

Method: This study was a descriptive cross–sectional study using secondary data from the notifiable diseases surveillance (R506) between 2018 and 2022, consisting of 10 priority diseases published in the Weekly Surveillance Report (WESR). The study compared the average difference between the number of cases visiting hospitals in            a given week and the number of cases reported to R506 in the same week. We estimated the number of patients reported in that week but with data sent into the R506 in the following weeks at 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, and 24 weeks, classified by disease, and further classified by pre-COVID-19 pandemic (2018–2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022).

Results: Before COVID-19 pandemic, there was an average of 747,619 reports per year, which was higher than during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an average of 366,600 reports per year (51.0% reduction in the number of reported cases). Respiratory diseases were the most affected. Comparing the different number of reports indicated that week with the reports added in the next 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, and 24 weeks, the average difference increased every week. After  1 week and 24 weeks, the number of reports increased by 266.9% and 478.6% respectively, higher than the differences during COVID-19 pandemic which reported cases increased by 93.0% and 236.9% respectively.

Summary: The number of reported cases before the COVID-19 outbreak was higher than during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may be due to the prevention and control measures for COVID-19 that affected respiratory tract infections. In addition, the number of retrospective reports before the COVID-19 pandemic was higher than during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may be due to the workload of surveillance officers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the surveillance should be evaluated to identify the reasons for the delay and using the data from the Digital Disease Surveillance for publication is recommended.