A COVID-19-Ready Public Health Surveillance System: The Food and Drug Administration’s Sentinel System

This journal article provides a description of the Food and Drug Administration’s sentinel surveillance system and its use in tracking and monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic. The tool’s application and component parts are introduced, along with their current application in public health practice.

Related Topics

Disease Tracking and Surveillance

Disease surveillance helps us detect disease cases, understand burden of disease and risk factors, provide the basis for timely and informed decision-making, guide control measures, and monitor impacts. Since the onset of COVID-19, surveillance efforts have worked to provide real-time tracking and forecast data, despite challenges with diagnostic capacity, case reporting, insufficient contact tracing, and fragmented data systems. COVID-19 has highlighted the need to invest in modern data systems, expand and skill up the workforce, and ensure data reporting and interpretation retain high ethical and epidemiological standards.

Related Sectors

Public Health

Skip to content