Performances of the three methods are summarised in terms of sensitivity and median detection time (MDT) in Table 1 . Our algorithm is almost 100% sensitive (the lowest being 98% for a very low case reporting rate of 0.5%). Its MDT ranges from 3 to 5 weeks compared to 4 to 6 weeks for the Mov-Avg Cusum and threshold methods. While the threshold method is 100% sensitive, Mov-Avg Cusum is the worst performing method with sensitivity of 77% to 97%. Note that time to pandemic detection is counted from the start week of the first infections in simulated pandemics. There is a lag of about 3 to 5 weeks between the first infections arising in simulated pandemics and the first cases which get reported by sentinel GPs to SERVIS. If, therefore, the reference point is changed to the week of the first reported cases, then MDT of the WCR method will not be more than 2 weeks.