Syndromic surveillance and its utilisation for mass gatherings

Abstract

Tremendous advancements in syndromic surveillance strategies over the last two decades, and specifically from prior mass gatherings, have been incorporated into day-to-day healthcare analysis worldwide and have left a lasting indirect impact since their inception. Mass gatherings are a daily occurrence worldwide and provide a scenario ripe for public health aims and objectives utilising syndromic surveillance. Europe is less than a decade away from hosting a colossal worldwide gathering (2024 Summer Olympics) in likely a time when the global agreement is in flux. A call to arms is needed for additional surveillance strategies incorporating mobile application symptom checker data, telemedicine, social media and social data sensing. There remains a need for an optimal combination of real-time data sensing that captures the whole population, but to reach that goal we must incorporate new advancements into baseline epidemiologic data monitoring, otherwise we will be tracking real-time mass gathering events on top of inaccurate baseline epidemiologic data.