ECDC and WHO develop a platform to monitor influenza, RSV and Covid

Developed jointly by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO) European Respiratory Virus Surveillance Summary (Erviss). The tool consists of interactive dashboards of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) surveillance data and also provides weekly epidemiological summaries. The main goal of the platform is to serve as an early detection and communication tool for signs of respiratory virus transmission in the European region.

As ECDC explains, Erviss ““Helping public health policymakers make timely, informed decisions to limit impacts on health systems and the public.”. The platform will also provide laboratory testing of circulating pathogens and virus characterization data, such as determination of virus type/subtype/strain, susceptibility to antiviral drugs, and similarity to existing vaccines.

The European organization said the creation of the new tool was the result of efforts last year “Moving from the unsustainable mass testing approach employed during the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic to a comprehensive respiratory virus surveillance approach capable of monitoring multiple pathogens.”

The goal is to leverage some of the improvements in national-level surveillance systems to develop standard methods for joint surveillance of influenza, RSV and SARS-CoV-2, as these viruses are expected to co-circulate in the coming years.

In July 2022, ECDC and the WHO Respiratory Virus Surveillance Group jointly issued operational guidance to assist countries in making this transition. In the EU/EEA and European regions, Countries are asked to step up “symptom surveillance” for patients with respiratory symptoms

weekly report.