Estimating HCV prevalence at the state level: a call to increase and strengthen current surveillance systems

Abstract

The degree to which case surveillance captures persons ever infected with HCV is unknown. We determined the discrepancy between HCV seroprevalence, estimated from national survey data, among adults in New York State in 2008 (n = 286 262, or 1.95%) and the number of infected persons reported to the state's surveillance hepatitis registries (n = 144 015). Findings suggest the need to strengthen the existing surveillance system.

FIGURE 1—

Use of surveillance registry data to determine the number of cases among living persons with HCV antibodies reported to New York State: 2001–2009 Note. NYC = New York City; NYS = New York State. ^aCases were defined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria as a confirmed past or present case for the year in which it was reported, because this definition has had several iterations. For our study, we defined cases as ever infected. ^bEach surveillance system performs deduplication on its reported cases; deduplication of the NYC and the NYS excluding NYC registries was performed prior to matching. ^cAdditional identifying information not available or data insufficient for robust matching. ^dDuplicates first identified based on first and last name, date of birth, and gender, then removed.