Pandemic Influenza Plan - Questar III

Section 2: Surveillance and Laboratory Testing
Once an influenza pandemic has been confirmed, public health epidemiologic resources
would likely need to be diverted from intense case investigation and contact tracing to
tracking the geographic distribution of illness, calculating the morbidity and mortality,
and determining the overall epidemiology of the outbreak. This will be critical to target
public health resources and modify prevention and control measures for local health
departments and medical providers.
New York State Department of Health would identify and recruit staff for the
epidemiology surge team. Persons would be assigned roles based on the experience and
receive just in time training. Roles would include case investigator, supervisor of case
investigators, and data collection and management, and data entry/clerical support staff.
The NYSDOH epidemiologic surge capacity training and response will be coordinated by
BCDC and the Regional Offices.
VI.
Activities by Pandemic Period
Interpandemic and Pandemic Alert Periods
State Health Department:
• Epidemiology:
o Develop materials and help educate healthcare providers about novel and
pandemic influenza.
o Provide consultation to LHDs and healthcare providers, as needed, on suspect
novel influenza cases.
o Upon request and as resources allow, Regional offices may send staff to LHDs to
assist them with investigation, data entry, etc.
o Provide updated surveillance information and materials to LHDs.
o Work with LHDs and Wadsworth Center to coordinate testing.
o Continue to recruit medical providers to participate in the CDC Influenza Sentinel
Provider Network.
o Maintain current influenza surveillance systems to monitor morbidity and
mortality.
o Identify critical resources for epidemiologic surge capacity.
• Personnel needed to assist with epidemiological investigations.
• Establish and maintain (update) contact lists, including other agencies
involved in non-human animal disease control (e.g., NYSDAM, NYSDEC,
USDA state offices).
• Wadsworth Center:
o Routine sample testing:
• Perform molecular influenza A detection coupled with virus isolation in cell
culture.
• Sub-typing will be performed by RT-PCR on either the original sample or the
cell-culture harvest and strain identification will be based on sequence for a
sub-set of samples.
February 7, 2006 2-21