ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1510057
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Strategies for Urban Public Health Resilience in Crisis SituationsView all 17 articles
Analysis of a syndromic surveillance system for infectious diseases of the 31st Summer World University Games in Chengdu, China
Provisionally accepted
- Chengdu Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu, China
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Chengdu hosted the 31st Summer World University Games in 2023. The movements and gatherings of attendees from other cities or even foreign countries may pose challenges to local public health, potentially leading to increased occurrences of infectious diseases or outbreaks. A syndromic surveillance system targeting infectious diseases was established to manage these risks. Suspicious cases and outbreaks would be identified early, and proper measures would be applied to minimize their impact. This article reviews the surveillance mechanism, analyzes the surveillance data, and evaluates its effectiveness.The mechanism of the syndromic surveillance system was described, and surveillance data were collected to evaluate strategies for infectious disease prevention and control during the Universiade. Epidemiological distributions of diseases were described, and differences were tested using Chi-square tests.Surveillance was carried out among athletes, coaches, entourages, and staff from one week before the competition to one week after. The surveillance focused on symptoms such as fever, cough, diarrhea, vomiting, rash, jaundice, conjunctival redness, and sore throat, supported by a self-developed Cloud Health Information System for Health Care Support and Syndromic Surveillance System for Infectious Disease. A total of 351 objects with disease-related symptoms, mainly including sore throat, cough, and fever, were reported. A total of 33 events of clustered symptoms were detected, none of which met the criteria for an outbreak. Fifty cases were confirmed with infectious diseases, comprising 43 cases of COVID-19, 3 cases of influenza, and one case each of infectious mononucleosis, chikungunya, malaria, and other infectious diarrhea.Throughout the event, reports of disease-related symptoms were sporadically distributed, with no secondary cases or outbreaks detected, and no health-related risks arising that would impact the continuation of the event. The syndromic surveillance system was sensitive and effective for the early detection and control of infectious disease outbreaks, and could be implemented in other mass-gathering events.
Keywords: Syndromic surveillance, mass-gathering events, Public Health, World University Games, Universiade
Received: 12 Oct 2024; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Dai, Liu, Feng, Chen, Long, Yan, Du, Du and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Liang Wang, Chengdu Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu, China
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