2019 Tabletop Exercise for Laboratory Diagnosis and Analyses of Unknown Disease Outbreaks by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• Main Authors: Il-Hwan Kim, Jun Hyeong Jang, Su-Kyoung Jo, Jin Sun No, Seung-Hee Seo, Jun-Young Kim, Sang-Oun Jung, Jeong-Min Kim, Sang-Eun Lee, Hye-Kyung Park, Eun-Jin Kim, Jun Ho Jeon, Myung-Min Choi, Boyeong Ryu, Yoon Suk Jang, Hwami Kim, Jin Lee, Seung-Hwan Shin, Hee Kyoung Kim, Eun-Kyoung Kim, Ye Eun Park, Cheon-Kwon Yoo, Sang-Won Lee, Myung-Guk Han, Gi-Eun Rhie, Byung Hak Kang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Korea Centers for Disease Control & Prevention 2020-10-01
• Series: Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives
• Subjects: cdc; covid-19; disease outbreaks
• Online Access: http://ophrp.org/upload/pdf/ophrp-11-280.pdf
• ISSN: 2210-9099; 2210-9110

Objectives The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published “A Guideline for Unknown Disease Outbreaks (UDO).” The aim of this report was to introduce tabletop exercises (TTX) to prepare for UDO in the future. Methods The UDO Laboratory Analyses Task Force in Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April 2018, assigned unknown diseases into 5 syndromes, designed an algorithm for diagnosis, and made a panel list for diagnosis by exclusion. Using the guidelines and laboratory analyses for UDO, TTX were introduced. Results Since September 9th, 2018, the UDO Laboratory Analyses Task Force has been preparing TTX based on a scenario of an outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus. In December 2019, through TTX, individual missions, epidemiological investigations, sample treatments, diagnosis by exclusions, and next generation sequencing analysis were discussed, and a novel coronavirus was identified as the causal pathogen. Conclusion Guideline and laboratory analyses for UDO successfully applied in TTX. Conclusions drawn from TTX could be applied effectively in the analyses for the initial response to COVID-19, an ongoing epidemic of 2019 – 2020. Therefore, TTX should continuously be conducted for the response and preparation against UDO.