VCOM View Vol 10 No 1

RESEARCH REVIEW

They currently have about ten other medical students

the efficacy of syndromic surveillance for the early detection of COVID-19 and beyond. Specifically, it reveals how medical students completing their clinical rotations can help monitor emerging diseases. I hope this paper adds to the growing body of research on COVID-19 and improves our surveillance in the future,” said Dr. Bruzda. “First, having all this regular reporting data from our students that is rich, very large, spatially distributed, real-time and growing means that there is almost an infinite number of questions we can ask and possibly have answered in this data,” said Garner.

started on January 6, three days before the Chinese CDC linked the mysterious pneumonia cases to the coronavirus, nine days before the first U.S. confirmed case and 24 days before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). “If we had early warning systems in place, like the one we demonstrate in our manuscript, we could intercept the next new infectious disease before it becomes a pandemic, saving many lives,” said Garner. ■

exploring the data on topics from hypertension, to diabetes to drug usage preference. The team sees the potential for this to be greatly expanded to include all health care trainees across the country and world, resulting in more possible discoveries. Data was gathered on CREDO from November 1, 2019, through March 13, 2020. In response to social distancing guidance, on March 13, 2020, VCOM closed its buildings to in-person classes and medical students were pulled from their clinical rotations. The first significant cluster of alerts

“ My paper demonstrates the efficacy of syndromic surveillance for the early detection of COVID-19 and beyond. Specifically, it reveals how medical students completing their clinical rotations can help monitor emerging diseases.”

Lieutenant Gabrielle A. Bruzda, DO VCOM-Virginia Class of 2020 graduate

summer/fall 2020 | VCOM V iew M agazine 45