Sentinel Surveillance of Infectious Diseases at Residential Care Homes for the Elderly (RCHEs)
Weekly Update

This weekly update outlines the data provided by RCHEs participating in the "Sentinel Surveillance of Infectious Diseases at Residential Care Homes for the Elderly". This update aims at informing the public of community-wide trends of infectious disease based on inference from the collected data, and does not represent the situation at any particular RCHE or geographic area.

I. Weekly Overview

Week 19 (6/5 - 12/5) Latest data reported by sentinel RCHEs showed that fever, acute diarrhoea and vomiting activities were at baseline level.

Year 2012 Week 19 Week 18 Week 17 Week 16 Surveillance period 6/5 - 12/5 29/4 - 5/5 22/4 - 28/4 15/4 - 21/4 Number of elderly (RCHEs) under surveillance 7447(62) 7468(62) 7470(62) 7469(62) Average number of elderly with fever per day (per 1000 elderly) 1.46 1.40 1.70 0.94 Average number of elderly with acute diarrhoea per day (per 1000 elderly) 0.08 0.11 0.08 0.10 Average number of elderly with vomiting per day (per 1000 elderly) 0.35 0.44 0.76 0.40

II. Surveillance of Fever symptom

Occurrence of fever in sentinel RCHE, 2011-2012 Week 2012 2011

III. Surveillance of Acute diarrhoea symptom

Occurrence of acute diarrhoea in sentinel RCHE, 2011-2012 Week 2012 2011

IV. Surveillance of Vomiting symptom

Occurrence of vomiting in sentinel RCHE, 2011-2012 Week 2012 2011

Methodology   1. Sentinel RCHEs record the number of elderly with fever, acute diarrhoea and vomiting on each day, and then send the data to the CHP on weekly basis.   2. The CHP calculates the average number of elderly with each symptom by dividing the total number of elderly having the corresponding symptoms by the total number of elderly in all data submitting RCHEs.