Digital Surveillance Networks of 2014 Ebola Epidemics and Lessons for COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how digital surveillance networks used during the 2014 Ebola outbreaks can inform and improve COVID-19 monitoring and response strategies by enhancing early detection and global awareness.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of Ebola spread using digital data, highlighting the potential for digital networks to strengthen public health surveillance for emerging diseases.

Findings

Digital surveillance networks can trace local to global transmission pathways.

Enhanced network understanding improves early detection of outbreaks.

Community-based digital systems support proactive health responses.

Abstract

2014 Ebola outbreaks can offer lessons for the COVOID-19 and the ongoing variant surveillance and the use of multi method approach to detect public health preparedness. We are increasingly seeing a delay and disconnect of the transmission of locally situated information to the hierarchical system for making the overall preparedness and response more proactive than reactive for dealing with emergencies such as 2014 Ebola. For our COVID-19, it is timely to consider whether digital surveillance networks and support systems can be used to bring the formal and community based ad hoc networks required for facilitating the transmission of both strong (i.e., infections, confirmed cases, deaths in hospital or clinic settings) and weak alters from the community. This will allow timely detection of symptoms of isolated suspected cases for making the overall surveillance and intervention strategy far more effective. The use of digital surveillance networks can further contribute to the development of global awareness of complex emergencies such as Ebola for constructing information infrastructure required to develop, monitor and analysis of community based global emergency surveillance in developed and developing countries. In this study, a systematic analysis of the spread during the months of March to October 2014 was performed using data from the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) and the Factiva database. Using digital surveillance networks, we aim to draw network connections of individuals/groups from a localized to a globalized transmission of Ebola using reported suspected/probable/confirmed cases at different locations around the world. We argue that public health preparedness and response can be strengthened by understanding the social network connections between responders (such as local health authorities) and spreaders (infected individuals and groups).