An outbreak chronology, or timeline of events, is a record of the important events that occurred during an outbreak investigation. There are two general types:
- Tabular or text-based: detailed summary of all important events occurring each day during the outbreak investigation (commonly used in practice).
- Visual: includes only main events plotted on an epidemic curve.
Question 4-3: What events should be included in a chronology?
- Number of cases by case type (for each date in the chronology)
- Investigation steps (e.g., date outbreak identified, date lead agency notified, date outbreak declared, date traceback begins, date hypothesis-generation begins, date(s) of results (laboratory, traceback, epidemiologic), date of OICC activation/deactivation, date an epidemiologic assessment is prepared, date outbreak declared over)
- Date(s) of public health action: risk communication to the public, awareness campaigns, recall of products, and closure of establishment.
- Other important communications that took place between partners (e.g., questionnaire collection, clarifications, investigation discussions, new information that is gathered, phone calls between partners and what was discussed)
- See the example (text-based) chronology for this investigation (Module 4 – Chronology), as well as the (visual) timeline of events (Module 4 – Visual chronology).
TOOLS