Rapid establishment of a national surveillance of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Belgium
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(2020) 78:121
METHODOLOGY
Open Access
Rapid establishment of a national surveillance of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Belgium Nina Van Goethem1,2* , Aline Vilain1, Chloé Wyndham-Thomas1, Jessika Deblonde1, Nathalie Bossuyt1, Tinne Lernout1, Javiera Rebolledo Gonzalez1, Sophie Quoilin1, Vincent Melis3 and Dominique Van Beckhoven1
Abstract Background: In response to the COVID-19 epidemic, caused by a novel coronavirus, it was of great importance to rapidly collect as much accurate information as possible in order to characterize the public health threat and support the health authorities in its management. Hospital-based surveillance is paramount to monitor the severity of a disease in the population. Methods: Two separate surveillance systems, a Surge Capacity survey and a Clinical survey, were set up to collect complementary data on COVID-19 from Belgium’s hospitals. The Surge Capacity survey collects aggregated data to monitor the hospital capacity through occupancy rates of beds and medical devices, and to follow a set of key epidemiological indicators over time. Participation is mandatory and the daily data collection includes prevalence and incidence figures on the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital. The Clinical survey is strongly recommended by health authorities, focusses on specific patient characteristics and relies on individual patient data provided by the hospitals at admission and discharge. Conclusions: This national double-level hospital surveillance was implemented very rapidly after the first COVID-19 patients were hospitalized and revealed to be crucial to monitor hospital capacity over time and to better understand the disease in terms of risk groups and outcomes. The two approaches are complementary and serve different needs. Keywords: COVID-19, Hospital-based surveillance, Hospital capacity, Hospital outcome
Background At the end of December 2019, the Chinese public health authorities reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China. The causative agent was identified as a novel coronavirus called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Public health and genome, Scientific Directorate of Epidemiology and public health, Sciensano, J. Wytsmanstraat 14, 1050 Brussels, Belgium 2 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institut de recherche expérimentale et clinique, Faculty of Public Health, Université catholique de Louvain, Clos Chapelle-aux-champs 30, 1200 Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, Belgium Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
related disease is referred to as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The initial outbreak in Wuhan spread rapidly, affecting other parts of China first and then an increasing number of countries, resulting in a pandemic [1]. The first European country to be severely hit by the epidemic was Italy at the end of February, followed by the other European countries a few weeks later [2, 3]. In Belgium, health authorities report
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