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Cited by 42Data-Driven Disease SurveillanceCOVID-19 Digital Contact TracingCOVID-19 epidemiological studies

Changes to public health surveillance methods due to the COVID-19 pandemic: scoping review

Open access
Clark, Emily C, Neumann, Sophie, Hopkins, Stephanie, Kostopoulos, Alyssa, Hagerman, Leah, Dobbins, Maureen·2024·JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
DOI 10.2196/49185PMC PMC10837764

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Public health surveillance plays a vital role in informing public health decision-making. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 caused a widespread shift in public health priorities. Global efforts focused on COVID-19 monitoring and contact tracing. Existing public health programs were interrupted due to physical distancing measures and reallocation of resources. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic intersected with advancements in technologies that have the potential to support public health surveillance efforts. OBJECTIVE: This scoping review aims to explore emergent public health surveillance methods during the early COVID-19 pandemic to characterize the impact of the pandemic on surveillance methods. METHODS: A scoping search was conducted in multiple databases and by scanning key government and public health organization websites from March 2020 to January 2022. Published papers and gray literature that described the application of new or revised approaches to public health surveillance were included. Papers that discussed the implications of novel public health surveillance approaches from ethical, legal, security, and equity perspectives were also included. The surveillance subject, method, location, and setting were extracted from each paper to identify trends in surveillance practices. Two public health epidemiologists were invited to provide their perspectives as peer reviewers. RESULTS: Of the 14,238 unique papers, a total of 241 papers describing novel surveillance methods and changes to surveillance methods are included. Eighty papers were review papers and 161 were single studies. Overall, the literature heavily featured papers detailing surveillance of COVID-19 transmission (n=187). Surveillance of other infectious diseases was also described, including other pathogens (n=12). Other public health topics included vaccines (n=9), mental health (n=11), substance use (n=4), healthy nutrition (n=1), maternal and child health (n=3), antimicrobial resistance (n=2), and misinformation (n=6). The literature was dominated by applications of digital surveillance, for example, by using big data through mobility tracking and infodemiology (n=163). Wastewater surveillance was also heavily represented (n=48). Other papers described adaptations to programs or methods that existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (n=9). The scoping search also found 109 papers that discuss the ethical, legal, security, and equity implications of emerging surveillance methods. The peer reviewer public health epidemiologists noted that additional changes likely exist, beyond what has been reported and available for evidence syntheses. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated advancements in surveillance and the adoption of new technologies, especially for digital and wastewater surveillance methods. Given the investments in these systems, further applications for public health surveillance are likely. The literature for surveillance methods was dominated by surveillance of infectious diseases, particularly COVID-19. A substantial amount of literature on the ethical, legal, security, and equity implications of these emerging surveillance methods also points to a need for cautious consideration of potential harm.

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  • The reduction in the number of microbiological cultures, elective procedures, and outpatient visits, alongside an increase in ICU admissions and admissions of chronically ill patients, could skew and subsequently bias AMR data used in the study.

    “The reduction in the number of microbiological cultures, elective procedures, and outpatient visits, alongside an increase in ICU admissions and admissions of chronically ill patients, could skew and subsequently bias AMR data used in our study.65, 75”

    From Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with forecasts to 2050 (2024) · cites this paper as [75]

    The Results section, “Perspectives From Public Health Epidemiologists” (page unavailable), says COVID-19 made some previously reliable surveillance metrics difficult or impossible to interpret. The paper does not link that problem to AMR data or report the claimed changes in cultures, procedures, visits, or patient admissions; searches for “microbiological cultures” and “chronically ill” found no such discussion. (LLM, conf=0.72)

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Research works printed but not linked: 12

  1. [26]Global public health intelligence network (GPHIN) independent review final report Canada PHAo 2021 2023-12-23 http://tinyurl.com/4w3t88ne
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  4. [163]Momynaliev KT Khoroshun DK Akimkin VG Online queries as a criterion for evaluation of the epidemiological status and effectiveness of COVID-19 epidemic control measures medRxiv. Preprint posted online on July 14 2021 10.1101/2021.07.11.21260148 · DOI
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  6. [303]Goldenfein J Green B Viljoen S Privacy versus health is a false trade-off SSRN J. Preprint posted online on May 26, 2020
  7. [305]Greenleaf G Kemp K Australia's COVIDSafe experiment, phase II: a draft law for surveillance and trust SSRN J. Preprint posted online on May 8, 2020
  8. [325]Oliva JD Surveillance, privacy, and app tracking SSRN J. Preprint posted online on July 31, 2020
  9. [327]Roberts SL COVID-19: the controversial role of big tech in digital surveillance LSE Business Review 2020 2023-12-23 http://tinyurl.com/33njhk5b
  10. [350]Hussein MR Apu EH Shahabuddin S Shams AB Kabir R Overview of digital health surveillance system during COVID-19 pandemic: public health issues and misapprehensions ArXiv. Preprint posted online on July 27, 2020
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Authors
Clark, E. C., Neumann, S., Hopkins, S., Kostopoulos, A., Hagerman, L., & Dobbins, M.
Affiliations
National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (CA)
Corresponding author
Dobbins, Maureen
ORCID
Venue
JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Publisher
JMIR Publications Inc.
Published
2024-01-19
Volume
10
Pages
e49185
ISSN
2369-2960 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.2196/49185
PMC
PMC10837764
OpenAlex
W4389457455
Cited by
42
References
376
Citations by year
2026: 16 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 7
FWCI
1.64
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
  • McMaster University
  • Public Health Agency of Canada
  • Public Health Agency
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Data-Driven Disease Surveillance
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Modeling and Simulation › COVID-19 epidemiological studies
Keywords
disease surveillance, COVID-19 pandemic, digital surveillance, big data, infodemiology, wastewater surveillance, mobility tracking, contact tracing, infectious disease surveillance, social distancing, antimicrobial resistance surveillance, mental health surveillance, substance use surveillance, vaccine surveillance, nutritional surveillance
MeSH terms
Wastewater-Based Epidemiological Monitoring, COVID-19, Child, Communicable Diseases, Humans, Pandemics, Wastewater, Public Health Surveillance

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