Influenza molecular surveillance strategy

Presentation by Eeva Broberg of ECDC at the Joint WHO/Euro & ECDC Annual Influenza Surveillance Meeting, Vienna, Austria, 11–13 June 2014

1. Influenza molecular surveillance
strategy
Joint WHO/Europe & ECDC Annual Influenza Surveillance Meeting
Vienna, 11-13 June 2014

Eeva Broberg, ECDC

2. Rationale for influenza molecular
surveillance at the global level
•Detection and monitoring of
•seasonal strains
•potential pandemic strains


ECDC. AF32/NMFP10 – The ECDC strategy and roadmap for integration of molecular typing into European level surveillance
and epidemic preparedness 2012.
•Outbreak detection including antiviral drug
susceptibility monitoring
•Selection of vaccine strains

3. Objectives with European added value
Linking the virus sequence data of a global sequence
database and virological and clinical data of TESSy for
Other objectives fulfilled by WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System.
1.Enhanced understanding of the virological markers of
severe infection


2.Detection of genetic markers associated with reduced
antiviral susceptibility
- To improve understanding of genetic markers
- To describe the prevalence of antiviral resistance
- To identify antiviral-resistant clusters

4. Proposed data flow

5. Benefits
Combining existing data resources of TESSy and GISAID, the
proposed system would allow to
1.Identify strains causing severe infections.
2.Detect genetic markers associated with reduced antiviral
susceptibility
- To have a more complete picture of genetic
resistance markers in circulating strains
- To be able to describe the prevalence of antiviral
resistance in Europe
- To make geospatial analysis of the strains at
sequence level, e.g. EU-level resistance outbreak
monitoring.

6. Challenges
TESSy can store sequence data, but
•not advisable to build “yet another sequence database” for
influenza
•influenza requires global sequence data sharing
•with the proposed data flow, the Member States need to
continue reporting to two databases
•GISAID has not agreed to the data flow from TESSy
to GISAID
•in TESSy, clinical severe influenza and virological
surveillance data are reported separately

7. ECDC Advisory Forum and National
Microbiology Focal Points feedback
1. Do you agree with the objectives for molecular surveillance
of influenza in EU/EEA countries?
- some questions in regard to the justification
- we can expand on the strain-based reporting pilot

2. Do you agree with the proposed principle of database
interaction between TESSy and the Global Initiative on
Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID)?
- yes

8. Next steps
•Finalize agreements with GISAID
•Proceed with IT development at ECDC
•MS to proceed with preparing for strain-based
reporting for 2014-2015

9. Questions to the working group
1.Do you agree with the objectives for
molecular surveillance of influenza in EU/EEA
countries? If not, what should be the
objectives?
2.What are the best output formats? How do
you want your data displayed and how
often?