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Health department narrows surveillance dashboard as seasonal diseases wane
Summary
Epidemiology staff presented a pared‑down dashboard focused on PCR lab‑based COVID, influenza and RSV seasonality, plans monthly monitoring in the off‑season, and described triggers for adding age breakdowns if sustained increases occur.
Nancy, the department's epidemiologist, presented a simplified off‑season disease dashboard that overlays seasonal years for COVID, influenza and RSV to make it easier to spot deviations from expected seasonality. She said the data come from state lab reporting and currently include only PCR, laboratory‑based tests, which affects measured COVID activity.
"Now that we are kind of at the end of flu RSV and hopefully COVID season," Nancy said, "I'm just showing COVID, influenza, and RSV ... this season in green has been very low." She described plans to monitor on a weekly basis and to update the dashboard monthly; if the county observes sustained increases (a few weeks), staff will add age‑group breakdowns and more frequent communications.
Board members asked about data sources, antigen reporting, and use of the dashboard for forecasting; Nancy said antigen tests are not reliably reported and the dashboard is designed as an early alert system tied to lab‑based metrics.
The board praised the epidemiologist's coding work and asked that forecasting and automated alerts be developed as follow‑up tasks.
