Severe Acute Respiratory Infection surveillance programme expanded to include two new sentinel sites in acute hospitals in Ireland
The severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) surveillance programme has expanded in Ireland.
SARI surveillance commenced in Ireland in July 2021, with one sentinel hospital site, St Vincent’s University Hospital (adults ≥15 years). The programme now includes two additional sentinel sites, St James’s Hospital (adults ≥15 years) and University Hospital Limerick (for SARI surveillance currently limited to paediatric cases ≤15 years). As a result of this expansion, the representativeness of the surveillance system has improved; the total population coverage increased from 6.1% to 11.2% and for first time, data on paediatric SARI cases are available (representing 7.1% coverage in the population less than15 years of age).
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 highlighted a global need to strengthen communicable diseases surveillance systems, particularly for monitoring severe acute respiratory infections (SARI). As a result during 2020, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) accelerated the development of European-level SARI surveillance.
In Ireland, SARI surveillance is a sentinel and syndromic surveillance programme, whereby SARI cases admitted to selected hospitals (sentinel sites) are identified based on their symptoms and through active screening of patient records. Identified SARI cases are tested for the following respiratory viruses, SARS-CoV-2 (virus that causes COVID-19), influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Data including demographic information (age, sex), clinical symptoms, laboratory results, and illness outcomes are collected on patients admitted with SARI symptoms. These data are used to inform public health and health services action and planning, particularly in relation to the impact of SARI on acute hospital settings.
Surveillance Reports
During the winter respiratory virus season (October to May), weekly SARI epidemiology reports are published on the HPSC website. This week’s report (Week 44 2024) is the first week where data from the three SARI sentinel hospital sites are presented. SARI surveillance is also integrated with other respiratory virus surveillance systems in order to create a comprehensive epidemiological picture of respiratory virus activity in the Irish population, see the weekly Integrated Respiratory Virus bulletin.
HPSC wishes to thank the SARI teams at the sentinel hospital sites and the National Virus Reference Laboratory (NVRL) for their commitment and ongoing support to the SARI surveillance programme in Ireland.