Notice: Users may be experiencing issues with displaying some pages on stanfordhealthcare.org. We are working closely with our technical teams to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.
 

Learn about the flu shot, COVID-19 vaccine, and our masking policy »

Stanford Health Care

Utility of Prehospital Call-Center Ambulance-Dispatch Data for COVID-19 Cluster-Surveillance: A Retrospective Analysis. Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Janagama, S. R., Strehlow, M. C., Rao, R. G., Kohn, M. A., Newberry, J. A. 2022

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Cluster surveillance, identification, and containment are primary outbreak management techniques, however, adapting these for low- and middle-income countries is an ongoing challenge. We aimed to evaluate the utility of prehospital call-center ambulance dispatch (CCAD) data for surveillance by examining the correlation between influenza-like illness-related (ILI) dispatch calls and COVID-19 cases.METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of state-level CCAD and COVID-19 data recorded between January 1 and April 30, 2020, in Telangana, India. The primary outcome was a time-series correlation between ILI calls in CCAD and COVID-19 case counts. Secondarily, we looked for a year-to-year correlation of ILI calls in the same period over 2018, 2019, and 2020.RESULTS: On average, ILI calls comprised 12.9% (95%CI: 11.7%-14.1%) of total daily calls in 2020, compared to 7.8% (95%CI: 7.6-8.0%) in 2018, and 7.7% (95%CI: 7.5-7.7%) in 2019. ILI call counts from 2018, 2019, and 2020 aligned closely until March 19, when 2020 ILI calls increased, representing 16% of all calls by March 23 and 27.5% by April 7. In contrast to the significant correlation observed between 2020 and previous years' January-February calls (2020&2019: DW=0.749, p<0.001; 2020&2018: DW=1.232, p<0.001), no correlation was observed for March-April calls (2020&19: DW=2.012, p=0.476; 2020&2018: DW=1.820, p=0.208). In March-April 2020, the daily reported COVID-19 cases by time series significantly correlated with the ILI calls (DW=0.977, p<0.001). The ILI calls on a specific day significantly correlated with the COVID-19 cases reported seven days prior and up to 14days after (cross-correlation >0.251, the 95% upper confidence limit).CONCLUSIONS: The statistically significant time-series correlation between ILI calls and COVID-19 cases suggests prehospital CCAD can be part of early warning systems aiding outbreak cluster surveillance, identification, and containment.

View details for DOI 10.1111/acem.14612

View details for PubMedID 36271649