Volume 18, Number 7—July 2012
Dispatch
Timeliness of Nongovernmental versus Governmental Global Outbreak Communications
Luke Mondor, John S. Brownstein, Emily Chan, Lawrence C. Madoff, Marjorie P. Pollack, David L. Buckeridge, and Timothy F. Brewer
Table 1
Time from the estimated start of an outbreak to its earliest communication by source*
| Variable | Governmental sources |
Nongovernmental sources |
p value | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. outbreaks | Median no. days (95% CI) | No. outbreaks | Median no. days (95% CI) | |||
| Period | ||||||
| 1996–2009 | 163 | 33.0 (30–44) | 103 | 23.0 (20–32) | 0.200 | |
| Pre-SARS | 90 | 39.5 (31–51) | 61 | 29.0 (20–50) | 0.161 | |
| Post-SARS | 73 | 29.0 (25–37) | 42 | 21.5 (17–32) | 0.613 | |
| Geographic location | ||||||
| Africa | 85 | 37.0 (29–51) | 41 | 31.0 (23–57) | 0.733 | |
| Americas | 13 | 30.0 (21–63) | 12 | 25.0 (20–34) | 0.568 | |
| Eastern Mediterranean | 24 | 41.0 (23–51) | 9 | 31.0 (16–82) | 0.903 | |
| Europe | 11 | 31.0 (23–79) | 9 | 20.0 (13–184) | 0.909 | |
| Southeast Asia | 8 | 28.0 (10–62) | 11 | 14.0 (11–51) | 0.431 | |
| Western Pacific | 22 | 26.0 (12–52) | 21 | 18.0 (13–33) | 0.789 | |
*Bootstrapping with 10,000 replicates was used to calculate 95% CIs for median values. SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome.
