Additional Surveillance Approaches for COVID-19

In addition to essential elements of comprehensive conventional surveillance for COVID-19, some additional approaches could be used to complement:

• Event-based surveillance - Captures unstructured information from formal and informal channels such as online content, radio broadcasts and print media across all relevant sectors to complement conventional public health surveillance efforts.
• Participatory Surveillance - Enables members of the public to self-report signs or symptoms, without laboratory testing or assessment by a health care provider
• Telephone hotlines - Made available to the public for advice and referral to health care services may provide an early indication of disease spread in a community.
• Serologic testing – Population-based surveys of antibody seropositivity and the use of serology in specific settings populations can help to provide estimates of the proportion of a population that has been infected by SARS-CoV-2 virus as measured by antibodies