COVID-19 integrated surveillance in Italy: Outputs and related activities

OBJECTIVES: to describe the integrated surveillance system of COVID-19 in Italy, to illustrate the outputs used to return epidemiological information on the spread of the epidemic to the competent public health bodies and to the Italian popu-lation, and to describe how the surveillance data contributes to the ongoing weekly regional monitoring and risk assessment system. METHODS: the COVID-19 integrated surveillance system is the result of a close and continuous collaboration between the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), the Italian Ministry of Health, and the regional and local health authorities. Through a web platform, it collects individual data of laboratory confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection and gathers information on their residence, laboratory diagnosis, hospital-isation, clinical status, risk factors, and outcome. Results, for different levels of aggregation and risk categories, are published daily and weekly on the ISS website, and made avail-able to national and regional public health authorities; these results contribute one of the information sources of the regional monitoring and risk assessment system. RESULTS: the COVID-19 integrated surveillance system mon-itors the space-time distribution of cases and their character-istics. Indicators used in the weekly regional monitoring and risk assessment system include process indicators on com-pleteness and results indicators on weekly trends of newly di-agnosed cases per Region. CONCLUSIONS: the outputs of the integrated surveillance system for COVID-19 provide timely information to health authorities and to the general population on the evolution of the epidemic in Italy. They also contribute to the continuous re-assessment of risk related to transmission and impact of the epidemic thus contributing to the management of COV-ID-19 in Italy.