Severe Cold Weather Syndromic Surveillance

Severe cold weather impacts on public health leading to increased health effects and deaths. The Department of Health Cold Weather Plan [external link] for England is a new initiative that aims to protect health and reduce harm from severe cold. Winter 2011/12 is the first year that the Cold Weather Plan for England has been launched and as part of the Plan, a Cold Watch system operates from 1 November to 31 March.

 

The system operates at four alert levels based on severe cold weather events forecast by the Met Office (UK) (which include temperature, widespread ice and/or heavy snow); ‘Level 1 - Winter Preparedness’ ‘Level 2 – 60% chance of severe cold weather occurring in the next two to three days’, ‘Level 3 – Response to severe cold weather – Severe weather action ‘Level 4 – Major Incident – Emergency Response’.

The plan draws on the experience of the Heatwave plan, in place since 2004 [external link].

While the Cold Watch system is in operation the HPA Real-time Syndromic Surveillance team routinely monitor a range of syndromic indicators from a number of syndromic surveillance systems that are sensitive to the impact of cold weather.

Cold-related indicators are included in the routine surveillance bulletins of each syndromic surveillance system while the Cold Watch system in is operation.