Although syndromic surveillance is increasingly used to detect unusual illness, there is a debate whether it is useful for detecting local outbreaks. We evaluated whether syndromic surveillance detects local outbreaks of lower-respiratory infections (LRIs) without swamping true signals by false alarms.
Centre for Infectious Disease Control, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, The Netherlands. kees.van.den.wijngaard@rivm.nl
