Syndromic surveillance supplements traditional surveillance sources, such as legally reportable communicable disease reports and death certificate data.
Mr. Cai said hundreds of inspectors were visiting 147 city hospitals to ensure that disease reports were accurate.
The UN agency said that Liberia is free of the disease, reports AFP.
Researchers analyzed disease reports before and after the times when vaccines became commercially available.
The team also said that many cases labeled as suspect, and not included in disease reports, actually should be reported as confirmed SARS cases.
Last week, in a blow to the credibility of Beijing's disease reports, a prominent military surgeon said that the city's military hospitals alone might hold 100 SARS patients.
Put simply, the estimates for prevented cases came from the falloff in disease reports after vaccines were licensed and widely available.
By combining airline records, disease reports and demographic data, BioMosaic lets public health officials visualize health risks through a Web site and an iPad app.
It is powerful data, but made even more so when placed in BioMosaic alongside a mapping tool that tracks on-the-ground disease reports.
While orthodox thinking at the time suggested that a diet so rich in animal fat would cause heart disease, reports of heart attacks there were very few.
But with only two nurses processing the disease reports she sends over to the county, down from five a few years ago, Ms. Neff said she had stopped even trying to ask for confirmation.
