Preface
On the 28th of October in 2020 German chancellor Angela Merkel and the head of the federal states stuck their heads together. They had to make tough decisions about measurements to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. We dont know exactly what they were talking about but we can be certain that they were making the decisions with graph in picture 1 in mind.
Infectious diseases are a threat to humanity: some have the ability to easily spread from one person to others persons and infecting all of mankind, some can be transmitted before the infectious persons knows that he is sick, some have no cure and a high fatality rate, some are able to spread long distances via air, water or food.
To combat infectious diseases mankind has developed numerous techniques throughout the ages. On very important tool that is a prerequisite to most count measures is infectious disease surveillance. Knowing what happens when and how is one of the cornerstonse of every response. And infectious disease surveillance does exactly that.