Rapid Communication reporting guide

A Rapid Communication is a timely notification of a change in the nature or spread of an infectious disease. It is a “heads up” that something new is on the horizon that may have immediate implications. For example, in December 2013, the first local transmission of the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus was confirmed in several Caribbean islands. A month later, clinicians in Canada were advised to consider this possibility in patients presenting with fever and arthralgia who had a positive travel history from one of the affected islands^{Footnote 1}. A year later, chikungunya virus had spread throughout the Caribbean and around the world and there was a documented spike in the number of travel-related cases of chikungunya virus in Canada^{Footnote 2}. Soon after, a similar pattern of expansion occurred with Zika virus^{Footnote 3}.

A Rapid Communication can be a preliminary outbreak report or an alert of a change in disease severity, risk factor(s), transmission patterns, reservoir, geographic spread or susceptibility to available therapies. It is a summary of what is currently known, the epidemiology (who is affected), how it is detected, what investigations are needed to establish the diagnosis and what clinical and public health measures are indicated to address it. The difference between a Rapid Communication and an Outbreak Report is that Outbreak Reports are generally written after an outbreak is over. Rapid Communications are written soon after an outbreak begins or a change in disease activity is identified. Reports of this nature can sometimes be published as a Brief Communication if the implications are not of an urgent nature.

The strength of a Rapid Communication—its advisory nature of alerting people to something new—is also its potential weakness, as some information may be lacking. If a new agent has been detected, information on incubation period, level of infectivity or even route of transmission may not be known. Early cases may not be representative of cases once the disease has spread. Therefore in the assessment section of a Rapid Communication, what is known and what is not yet known needs to be well-summarized.

The Canada Communicable Disease Report (CCDR) has developed a 16-item checklist for reporting on Rapid Communications based on best practices in scientific communications (Table 1). Such reports are generally 1,000 to 1,500 words in length. As with all submissions, check CCDR's Information for Authors for general manuscript preparation and submission requirements^{Footnote 4}.