Specialist laboratory networks as preparedness and response tool - the Emerging Viral Diseases-Expert Laboratory Network and the Chikungunya outbreak, Thailand, 2019
Eurosurveillance·
- DOI
- 10.2807/1560-7917.es.2020.25.13.1900438
- PMID
- 32265004
- PMCID
- PMC7140599
- OpenAlex
- W3014686397
- Study type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC)
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
The report illustrates how a specialist laboratory network can consolidate diagnostic and sequence data across countries to support outbreak situational awareness, while noting that preparedness impact depends on further standardisation of data collection and quality.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
The paper examines whether a specialist laboratory network can function as a preparedness and response tool by rapidly collecting and sharing data during an outbreak, using the 2019 chikungunya outbreak in Thailand and related imported cases as a case study.
Study design
A descriptive report describing network-based data collection across the Emerging Viral Diseases-Expert Laboratory Network (EVD-LabNet), capturing laboratory requests, diagnosed imported chikungunya cases, and viral sequences during a defined comparison period.
Population and setting
The setting is the EVD-LabNet network of specialist laboratories, with the population comprising returning European travellers diagnosed with chikungunya virus infection, particularly those with reported travel to Thailand. The observation window covers 1 October 2018 to 30 April 2019, compared with the same period in 2018.
Main findings
Imported chikungunya cases reported across the network rose from 50 to 172 between the two comparison periods, with travel to Thailand increasing from 1 to 72 cases. Diagnostic requests rose by 23.6% between the two periods. Sequence data from Thailand-imported strains clustered with the ECSA-IOL E1 A226 variant linked to outbreaks in Pakistan (2016) and Italy (2017).
Public-health relevance
The report illustrates how a specialist laboratory network can consolidate diagnostic and sequence data across countries to support outbreak situational awareness, while noting that preparedness impact depends on further standardisation of data collection and quality.
Important limitations
The authors indicate that the network's utility as a preparedness and response tool is constrained by the current lack of standardisation in how laboratories collect, quality-check, and mine data within routine management systems.
GIDS interpretation
Within GIDS, the abstract is discoverable under chikungunya, diagnostics, outbreak investigation, surveillance, and travel medicine, with links to Thailand, Italy, and Pakistan; its relevance to any live surveillance signal would need to be assessed against the original paper rather than inferred here.
Related GIDS surveillance
Literature context does not validate, explain, or change a surveillance signal. Exact and contextual relationships are shown separately.
Evidence relationships
This article has 11 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.