Beyond early warning: towards greater granularity in the use of event-based surveillance for public health emergencies

The timeliness between initial alerts of early outbreak detection and key epidemiological evidence about the emerging threat reached far beyond the first warning for the global community. To improve on the best knowledge available for an immediate response, it is recommended that further gathering and documentation from event-based surveillance is engaged to create a more complete assessment for uncontrollable infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics. Enhanced EBS (through modern tools, e.g., Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) are critical for timely detection and response to such events.