The objectives of covid-19 surveillance are to: • monitor sars-cov-2 incidence and covid-19 morbidity and mortality

Acknowledgements
From the World Health Organization: Maya Allan, Brett Archer, Armanath Bapu, Isabelle Bergeri, Lisa Carter, Jane Cunningham, 
Julia Fitzner, Martha Gacic-Dobo, Masaya Kato, Biaukula Viema Lewagalu, Piers Mook, Minal Patel, Boris Pavlin, Richard 
Pebody, Tika Ram, Lorenzo Subissi, Hattori Yuta, Robert Jakob, Jacobus Preller, Carine Alsokhn, Boshan Cao, Janet Diaz, 
Kathleen Strong, Mick Mulders, Katelijn Vandemaele, Anthony Nardone, Marta Valenciano, Hannah Lewis 
Funding: WHO Internal Funds 
WHO continues to monitor the situation closely for any changes that may affect this interim guidance. Should any factors change, 
WHO will issue a further update. Otherwise, this interim guidance document will expire two years after the date of publication.
© 
World Health Organization 2022. Some rights reserved. This work is available under the 
CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO
 licence. 
WHO reference number: WHO/2019-nCoV/SurveillanceGuidance/2022.1

---

Document Outline

• Public health surveillance for COVID-19
• Key points
• Background
• Purpose of this document
• Methodology
• 1. Definitions for surveillance
  • 1.1. Case definition
  • 1.2. Definition of a contact
  • 1.3. Definition of COVID-19 death for surveillance purposes
  • 1.4. Vulnerable and “high-risk” populations
  • 1.5. Variant definitions
  • 1.6. Reinfection: standard evidence for investigation
  • 1.7. Breakthrough Infections in vaccinated persons
  • 1.8. Post Covid Condition
• 2. Recommended COVID-19 surveillance for Member States
  • 2.1. Aims and objectives
  • 2.2. Diagnostic tools
  • 2.3. Surveillance approaches
  • 2.4. Essential surveillance for COVID-19
  • 2.5. Surveillance strategies
    • 2.5.1. Transmission scenarios and detection strategies
    • 2.5.2. Case detection and testing in the community
    • 2.5.3. Surveillance at the primary care level
    • 2.5.4. Hospital-based surveillance
    • 2.5.5. Sentinel site (ILI/ARI/SARI) surveillance
    • 2.5.6. Closed settings
  • 2.6. Health care-associated SARS-CoV-2 infections
  • 2.7. Mortality surveillance
  • 2.8. SARS-CoV-2 variant surveillance
  • 2.9. Vaccination effectiveness and impact
• 3. Additional surveillance methods and approaches for COVID-19
  • 3.1. Event-based surveillance
  • 3.2. Telephone hotlines
  • 3.3. Participatory surveillance
  • 3.4. Serological surveys
  • 3.5. Surveillance in humanitarian and other low-resource settings
  • 3.6. Environmental surveillance
• 4. Reporting COVID-19 surveillance data to WHO
  • 4.1. International Health Regulations
  • 4.2. Case-based reporting
  • 4.3. Daily aggregated data collection
  • 4.4. Weekly aggregated reporting
  • 4.5. DHIS2 packages
  • 4.6. Reporting of COVID-19 through the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS)
  • 4.7. Data analysis, display and outputs
  • 4.8. Monitoring and evaluation framework
  • 4.9. Vaccination
• Selected references