Infectious Disease decision-support tools and Alert systems (IDAlert)

Climate change is one of several drivers of recurrent outbreaks and geographical range expansion of zoonotic infectious diseases in Europe. Policy and decision-makers need tailored monitoring of climate-induced disease risk, and decision-support tools for timely early warning and impact assessment for proactive preparedness and timely responses. To be able to meet this challenge, a holistic perspective is required. The EU-project IDAlert has a clear focus on the link between animals, humans and the environment, with the goal of jointly achieving a more up-to-date and effective preparedness in Europe.

SVA's focus is to increase preparedness for new tick-borne infections. We have developed a tool, Report Tick, which is used to monitor and provide early warning signals – if we find a new tick species, there is also a risk that it carries new infectious agents. Non-endemic species, such as Hyalomma marginatum and Dermacentor reticulatus, which are found sporadically in Sweden, contribute to an increased risk of animals and humans being infected by tick-borne pathogens that do not currently occur in the country.

The report tick tool was launched in 2023 and is aimed for citizens in Sweden to actively report tick findings. Over 39,000 tick findings have been reported since the start, which has contributed to valuable information about both domestic and non-endemic tick species. Feedback on results to the public during ongoing collection is an important part of maintaining activity and contributing to community education in the field. Continued use and development of the tool provides the opportunity to collect large amounts of data over long periods of time and thus contributes to robust and sustainable monitoring of tick species and tick-borne infections.