Surveillance

Throughout 2022, the Centre continued to detect threats through event-based surveillance, expanding the range of data sources. Surveillance and epidemic intelligence were further integrated to improve signal detection, validation and assessment. As part of efforts to contain the pandemic, ECDC helped Member States to strengthen their immediate capacity to detect and monitor variants of SARS-CoV-2 and to strengthen their microbiological capacity for SARS-CoV-2 and influenza.

In May 2022, a major outbreak of mpox was detected for the first time in EU/EEA countries, with multiple human-to-human transmissions. ECDC supported Member States' surveillance, response, preparedness and prevention activities. Various training courses and online seminars were organised to improve the knowledge of public health professionals and veterinarians. ECDC has published numerous risk assessments, epidemiological updates, such as the mpox surveillance bulletin published jointly with the WHO Regional Office for Europe, and guidance documents.

In addition, between April and July 2022, following an outbreak of hepatitis of unknown origin in children, ECDC implemented a case-based surveillance system with a common case definition and a case notification protocol for countries. The results of the analysis of these data have been published periodically in the joint ECDC/WHO Regional Office for Europe Surveillance Bulletin.

During this period, the Centre also continued to develop the rapid communication of laboratory information for surveillance and alert purposes, and to help Member States strengthen their microbiology capacities.

In 2022, ECDC and the European Commission continued to provide EU/EEA Member States and Western Balkan countries with access to outsourced whole genome sequencing services for SARS-CoV-2 samples. More than 110 000 samples from 12 EU/EEA Member States and three Western Balkan countries were processed between January and December 2022. Timely and secure WGS data sharing and storage are facilitated by customised, protected workspaces for WGS data management.

ECDC started a framework contract with a consortium to facilitate the transition of Member States towards automated surveillance from electronic health records. A total of 13 countries began implementing surveillance of Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) and 22 are ready to start with surveillance of bloodstream infections in 2023.

ECDC updated its Surveillance Atlas of Infectious Diseases with 2021 data and published updated Annual Epidemiological Report chapters covering 2019, 2020 and 2021 to catch up with delays due to the COVID19 pandemic.

The new ECDC surveillance portal, EpiPulse, allowing ECDC and Member States users to perform all surveillance operations from one single entry point, was adapted to generate the daily and weekly Communicable Diseases Threats Reports (CDTR), which were published throughout the year. In addition, throughout the year the portal was developed to include the collection, processing, analysis and visualisation of whole genome sequencing (WGS) data.

During 2022, ECDC joined an EC-funded consortium to pilot the feasibility of carrying out AMR surveillance using the European Health Data Space (EHDS) infrastructure. The pilot will continue during 2023. Epidemic intelligence operations were further strengthened by the transition to the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources system as the main media aggregator tool and by further improving and automating event detection from social media thanks to a more advanced version of EpiTweetr.