Development and Evaluation of Statewide Prospective Spatiotemporal Legionellosis Cluster Surveillance, New Jersey, USA

Abstract

Incidence of Legionnaires’ disease is increasing, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic states in the United States; since 2015, New Jersey has documented ≈250–350 legionellosis cases per year. We used SaTScan software to develop a semiautomated surveillance tool for prospectively detecting legionellosis clusters in New Jersey. We varied temporal window size and baseline period to evaluate optimal parameter selections. The surveillance system detected 3 community clusters of Legionnaires’ disease that were subsequently investigated. Other, smaller clusters were detected, but standard epidemiologic data did not identify common sources or new cases. The semiautomated processing is straightforward and replicable in other jurisdictions, likely by persons with even basic programming skills.

Keywords

• Legionellosis
• Legionnaires’ disease
• surveillance
• bacteria
• water-borne diseases
• New Jersey