5.B. Workshop: Combining surveillance, survey and outbreak data for monitoring COVID-19 in German day care centres
Authors:   Organised by: Robert Koch Institute, German Youth Institute (Germany),   Chair persons: Susanne Jordan (Germany), Herman Van Oyen (Belgium)
Published: October 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic is evolving rapidly. In order to better understand and govern pandemic response in different sectors of society, differentiated insights into the local epidemiological development of COVID-19 and the local implementation of containment measures are required. But it became increasingly clear that, in addition to officially collected notification data, further data sources should give insights into further health indicators, living and working conditions under the pandemic. Therefore, in this workshop, we will present insights from four projects that provide data from different sources for comprehensive monitoring the pandemic exemplary for the setting “day care centres” in Germany. The aim of this workshop is to give insights into the challenges and solutions found to monitor the infection dynamic and the everyday situation in day care centres during the pandemic. The methods and results presented should be useful for other regions and public health institutions in Europe. The workshop brings together different public health perspectives and presents findings that illustrate the special added value of interinstitutional, interdisciplinary and especially intersectoral cooperation for public health monitoring and social reporting. The childcare system as well as the public health system in Germany are highly federally and locally organised und therefore pose a challenge to provide quickly collected data for governance. Therefore, initiated in June 2020, under the umbrella “Corona Day Care Study” four studies were combined to deliver comprehensive data to monitor the pandemic in day care centres, e.g. in monthly reports and in a dash board to the public health community. The joint study is investigating the conditions under which child day care can be successfully managed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the role it plays in the spread of the coronavirus. It combines social sciences, epidemiological biostatistics and laboratory examinations. In four contributions, different data sources and methods will be presented. We will discuss following topics: (1) integration of mandatory national surveillance data and literature reviews, (2) social, structural and hygienical determinants of COVID-19 in day care centres using panel data, (3) frequencies of COVID-19 protection measures by survey data from day care centres and (4) description of infection dynamics of COVID-19 in day care centres based on outbreak analysis in day care centres. The workshop offers an opportunity for researchers and all those who are interested in health monitoring and in the situation of day care centres during the pandemic, to discuss experiences and how to be prepared for the next pandemic. By discussion, intense interaction will be ensured, allowing to learn from each other, and enable networking and capacity building. Each project will be given enough time to present their methods, results and lessons learned followed by a discussion with the audiences.

Key messages

Combining mandatory and voluntary reporting data from the health and the education sector, surveys and individual outbreak data creates a solid basis for pandemic response in day care centres. To be prepared for the next pandemic public health monitoring systems should be established that combine health notification data with data from sectors like education, work and elderly care.