Module Key Takeaways

• Public health surveillance is an on-going and systemic health data collection, compilation, analysis and interpretation for public health action.
• The objective of COVID-19 surveillance is to enable rapid detection, isolation, testing, and management of suspected cases and identify and make follow up of contacts.
• A COVID-19 death is defined for surveillance purposes as any death resulting from a clinically compatible illness in a suspected, probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID-19 (e.g., trauma).
• Exit screening is used to identify outgoing passengers With possible symptoms of, or with risk of exposure to, COVID-19, and To prevent them from further travel.
• Entry screening is important to identify any incoming passenger at PoEs who might be COVID-19 infected or suspect.
• Rumor or alert is information, often mixture of truth and untruth passed around verbally, therefore needs further investigation.
• A rapid response team (RRT) is essential for a comprehensive response to an alert case and should be ready 24/7.
• Once a case has been identified, one of the public health measures is tracking down people who may have been exposed to the virus is through contact tracing.
• Based on the level of exposure to COVID-19 patients, contacts classified as: close (high-risk exposure) contact and casual (low-risk exposure) contact.
• There are five key phases in contact tracing: no case, early stage of outbreak, expanding outbreak, early stage of outbreak and large outbreak with nationwide transmission.