Outbreak response or outbreak control measures are acts which attempt to minimize the spread of or effects of a

disease outbreak In epidemiology, an outbreak is a sudden increase in occurrences of a disease when cases are in excess of normal expectancy for the location or season. It may affect a small and localized group or impact upon thousands of people across an entire ...

. Outbreak response includes aspects of general

disease control Preventive healthcare, or prophylaxis, consists of measures taken for the purposes of disease prevention.Hugh R. Leavell and E. Gurney Clark as "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical and mental hea ...

such as maintaining adequate

hygiene Hygiene is a series of practices performed to preserve health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "Hygiene refers to conditions and practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases." Personal hygiene refer ...

, but may also include responses that extend beyond traditional healthcare settings and are unique to an outbreak, such as

physical distancing In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, (NB. Regula Venske is president of the PEN Centre Germany.) is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious disea ...

contact tracing In public health, contact tracing is the process of identifying persons who may have been exposed to an infected person ("contacts") and subsequent collection of further data to assess transmission. By tracing the contacts of infected individua ...

, mapping of

disease cluster A disease cluster is an unusually large aggregation of a relatively uncommon medical condition or event within a particular geographical location or period. Recognition of a cluster depends on its size being seen as greater than would be expected ...

s, or

quarantine A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have been ...

. Some measures such as isolation are also useful in preventing an outbreak from occurring in the first place. Epidemic response or pandemic response is when outbreak response are used within a disease outbreak that has been classified as an

epidemic An epidemic (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time. Epidemics ...

pandemic A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic (epidemiology), endemic disease wi ...

. Outbreak response is normally conducted by teams, which include infection control physicians,

epidemiologists Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidenc ...

, infectious disease specialists and a number of other specialties.

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

s are often involved in constructing models of disease spread.

Strategies

The basic strategies in the control of an outbreak are containment and mitigation. Containment may be undertaken in the early stages of the outbreak, including

and isolating infected individuals to stop the disease from being spread to the rest of the population, other public health interventions on infection control, and therapeutic countermeasures such as

vaccination Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating ...

s which may be effective if available. When it becomes apparent that it is no longer possible to contain the spread of the disease, it will then move on to the mitigation stage, when measures are taken to slow the spread of disease and mitigate its effects on the health care system and society. In reality, a combination of both containment and mitigation measures may be undertaken at the same time to control an outbreak. A key part of managing an infectious disease outbreak is trying to decrease the epidemic peak, known as flattening the epidemic curve. This helps decrease the risk of health services being overwhelmed and providing more time for a vaccine and treatment to be developed. Non-pharmaceutical interventions may be taken to manage the outbreak; for example in a flu pandemic, these actions may include personal preventive measures such as hand hygiene, wearing face-masks and self-quarantine; community measures aimed at

social distancing In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, (NB. Regula Venske is president of the PEN Centre Germany.) is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious disea ...

such as closing schools and cancelling mass gathering events; community engagement to encourage acceptance and participation in such interventions; as well as environmental measures such as cleaning of surfaces. Another strategy, suppression, requires more extreme long-term non-pharmaceutical interventions so as to reverse the pandemic by reducing the

basic reproduction number In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number, or basic reproductive number (sometimes called basic reproduction ratio or basic reproductive rate), denoted R_0 (pronounced ''R nought'' or ''R zero''), of an infection is the expected number of ...

to less than 1. The suppression strategy, which include stringent population-wide social distancing, home isolation of cases and household quarantine, was undertaken by China during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

where entire cities were placed under lockdown, but such strategy carries with it considerable social and economic costs.

References

Sources

* * *

* * * https://odh.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/odh/know-our-programs/outbreak-response-bioterrorism-investigation-team * * * {{Cite web, url=https://www.shea-online.org/index.php/journal-news/press-room/press-release-archives/555-w-document-guides-hospitals-in-responding-to-infectious-disease-outbreaks, title=New Document Guides Hospitals in Responding to Infectious Disease Outbreaks , publisher= Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, access-date=2020-03-26 Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Strategies

See also

References

Sources