Key data for outbreak evaluation: building on the Ebola experience

Cori, Anne; Donnelly, Christl A.; Dorigatti, Ilaria; Ferguson, Neil M.; Fraser, Christophe; Garske, Tini; Jombart, Thibaut; Nedjati-Gilani, Gemma; Nouvellet, Pierre; Riley, Steven; Van Kerkhove, Maria D.; Mills, Harriet L.; Blake, Isobel M.

During an outbreak, multiple interventions are often implemented by different groups and organizations. Evaluating the role of interventions in interrupting transmission is important for revising and improving efforts, but it is challenging without detailed quantitative information of what has been implemented where and when [111, 112] . Maintaining a systematic real-time record of the different interventions at a fine spatio-temporal scale would help, e.g. the number and location of health-care facilities and their personnel, number of beds, vaccine or treatment coverage and details of local community mobilization. Developing centralized platforms to routinely record such data once a large-scale outbreak is underway is probably unfeasible. However, developing such tools in advance of outbreaks (such as those developed for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative [113] and those recently developed to collect health-care facility data [114] ) should be a priority since better information to evaluate intervention policies in real time will allow for more optimal resource allocation.