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Other communicable disease surveillance

Laboratory Virology and Serology Reporting Scheme

The Laboratory Virology and Serology Reporting Scheme is a passive surveillance scheme based on voluntary reports of infectious agents managed by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. LabVISE receives data from virology and serology laboratories around Australia. In 2000, reports from the scheme were analysed and published monthly in Communicable Diseases Intelligence.

LabVISE provides information on a number of viruses and other infectious agents (bacteria, parasites and fungi), and the demographic characteristics of persons they infect. The scheme records information on some infectious agents that are not reported by other surveillance systems. The database currently holds over 500,000 records collected since 1982.

LabVISE data interpretation is limited by uncertainties about the representativeness of the data, the lack of denominator data to calculate rates and variable reporting coverage over time. In addition, there are no consistent case definitions currently in use. For example, in 2000, there were 18 reports of Murray Valley encephalitis virus identification from Western Australia in LabVISE compared with 9 cases reported to the Western Australian health department. The LabVISE reports probably include positive screening test results from people without clinical disease, which falsely inflates the prevalence of clinical MVE disease.

In 2000, 14 laboratories contributed 23,655 reports to LabVISE. This was a decrease of 10.6 per cent compared with the number of reports in 1999 (26,452). Although there were no contributing laboratories in either the Northern Territory or the Australian Capital Territory, samples from these jurisdictions were included in the reports from reference laboratories (Table 29).

The breakdown of LabVISE reports in 2000 is shown in Table 29. Of the 23,713 reports received, 17,337 (73%) were of viral infections and 6,318 (27%) were bacterial, spirochaetes, fungal, protozoan or helminthic infections. Ortho/paramyxoviruses (including influenza A and B, parainfluenza and respiratory syncytial virus) represented the most commonly reported group of viral infections, accounting for 32 per cent of viral reports. Reports of herpesviruses (including herpes type 6, cytomegalovirus, varicella-zoster and Epstein Barr virus) accounted for 27 per cent of viral reports (Figure 55). Chlamydia accounted for more than half of all reports (52%) of non-viral infections.

Table 29. Infectious agents reported to LabVISE, Australia, 2000

Organism	ACT	NSW	NT	Qld	SA	Tas	Vic	WA	Aust
Measles virus	3	4	0	0	8	0	19	10	44
Mumps virus	0	0	2	0	4	0	5	38	49
Rubella virus	1	6	3	16	7	0	10	8	51
Hepatitis A virus	2	4	11	28	29	0	3	69	146
Hepatitis D virus	0	1	0	3	0	0	4	1	9
Hepatitis E virus	0	0	1	0	0	2	0	1	4
Ross River virus	1	29	80	322	261	4	28	543	1,268
Barmah Forest virus	0	5	11	120	5	0	1	27	169
Dengue	1	4	62	1	0	1	0	112	181
Murray Valley encephalitis virus	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	18	20
Kunjin virus	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	3	4
Flavivirus (unspecified)	0	0	4	23	0	2	11	0	40
Adenovirus	8	162	9	15	378	6	192	435	1,205
Herpes virus	57	366	36	1,246	1,316	37	686	994	4,738
Other DNA viruses	9	6	5	78	37	2	79	198	414
Picornavirus family	12	369	10	26	30	7	582	491	1,527
Ortho/paramyxoviruses	89	1,272	12	239	1,234	48	761	1,949	5,604
Other RNA viruses	112	740	2	1	464	17	279	249	1,864
Chlamydia trachomatis	51	453	230	770	520	32	98	1,009	3,155
Chlamydia pneumoniae	30	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	36
Chlamydia psittaci	1	0	0	0	0	6	82	13	102
Mycoplasma species	3	49	13	203	128	4	207	87	694
Coxiella burnetii	1	8	0	34	11	0	24	23	101
Rickettsia species	0	0	1	0	0	6	4	11	22
Streptococcus group A	0	27	56	201	0	0	64	0	348
Yersinia enterocolitica	0	11	0	3	0	0	0	1	15
Brucella species	0	1	0	4	1	0	0	0	6
Bordetella pertussis	13	84	2	88	129	4	342	27	689
Legionella pneumophila	0	0	0	1	10	0	26	7	44
Legionella longbeachae	2	1	0	0	23	0	1	32	59
Legionella species	0	1	0	0	0	0	4	0	5
Cryptococcus species	0	6	0	0	11	0	1	0	18
Leptospira species	0	3	1	41	15	0	0	3	63
Treponema pallidum	0	68	222	262	331	0	0	27	910
Protozoa	1	2	0	5	5	0	13	7	33
Echinococcus granulosus	0	1	0	0	7	1	0	9	18
Total	397	3,689	776	3,730	4,964	179	3,526	6,402	23,655

Top of pageFigure 55. LabVISE reports, Australia, 2000



Parainfluenza viruses are an important cause of acute respiratory infection in infants and children. In March 2000, there was an outbreak of human parainfluenza type 1 (HPIV-1) in Australia. This is in keeping with biennial outbreaks of this parainfluenza strain in Autumn in Australia (Figure 56). Parainfluenza type 2 (HPIV-2) causes smaller outbreaks in alternate years to type 1, while there are annual outbreaks of parainfluenza type 3 (HPIV-3) annually in the Winter months. The majority of isolates (157/230, 68%) were from children aged 0-4 years.

Figure 56. Trends in laboratory reports of human parainfluenza virus strains 1, 2 and 3, Australia, 1991 to 2000, by month of report



Echovirus type 30 has caused large outbreaks of aseptic meningitis in many regions of the world in the past 40 years. LabVISE received 121 reports of echovirus 30 isolates in 2000. All but three of these were from New South Wales and Victoria. This is the first significant reporting of echovirus 30 to LabVISE since 1995 (Figure 57). Of the 121 cases 51 (42%) were in children under 10 years of age and 50/89 (56%) with diagnosis information were from individuals with a diagnosis of meningitis.

Figure 57. Trends in laboratory reports of Echovirus 30, Australia, 1991 to 2000 by month of report



An outbreak of pharyngoconjunctival fever occurred among school children in North Queensland in October 2000. Seven children who had attended a camp and presented with symptoms were investigated. Five of these children had positive viral cultures of adenovirus 3. However, an examination of the absenteeism rates at the school after the camp, suggested that 34 children had been infected. Fever, headache and sore throat were the most common symptoms.¹⁰⁸

A review of LabVISE reports over the 10 years (1991 to 2000), examining data trends and quality will be published in the next issue of Communicable Diseases Intelligence.

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Rotavirus Surveillance Programme 2000/2001¹⁰⁹

A national rotavirus surveillance programme was commenced in June 1999 to undertake the surveillance and characterisation of rotavirus strains causing annual epidemics of severe diarrhoea in young children throughout Australia. Among 1,108 rotavirus isolates examined between June 2000 and May 2001, serotype G1 was the most common (49.5%) followed by serotypes G9 (18.1%), G2 (12.5%) and G4 (9.7%). Two outbreaks were detected, one of serotype G4 in Gove in the Northern Territory in September 2000 and another of serotype G9 in Alice Springs in May 2001.

Reports of the Australian National Polio Reference Laboratory^110,111

Enterovirus testing of all cases of acute flaccid paralysis is an essential activity in the post-polio eradication era. The WPR, which includes Australia, was officially declared polio-free by the WHO in October 2000.

The Australian National Polio Reference Laboratory is responsible for processing and testing samples for poliovirus from all Australian patients with acute flaccid paralysis and for characterising polioviruses recovered from untyped enteroviruses submitted from Australian laboratories. Between 1 January and 31 December 2000, 35 specimens from 20 patients with acute flaccid paralysis were tested. Poliovirus type 3 Sabin-type was isolated from samples from 2 patients while the remaining samples from the other 18 patients were negative. In both AFP patients with positive culture for poliovirus, Clostridium botulinum toxin and/or other bacteria were detected in stool samples. The expert committee that reviews all cases did not consider polio to be the cause of the AFP.


This article was published in Communicable Diseases Intelligence Volume 26, No 2, June 2002