Category A agents definition

Category A agents. Category A agents can create situations that significantly impact community health. Most require broad public health preparedness efforts, such as enhanced surveillance and rapid public health response, particularly if used intentionally or found to be widespread. For this performance measure, awardees should report only for botulism and tularemia. Date of diagnosis – presumptive/clinical: Selection of this case event date type presumes awardees (and LHDs) have or will have a standardized process and defined data field in place in their surveillance system(s) to capture this information. Awardees that have a generic date of diagnosis field on their case report forms or in their electronic disease surveillance systems should be sure they have clearly defined whether this field refers to presumptive/clinical or lab- confirmed diagnosis. Please see definitions section for more information.
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Category A agents. Category A agents can create situations that significantly impact community health. Most require broad public health preparedness efforts, such as enhanced surveillance and rapid public health response, particularly if used intentionally or found to be widespread. For this performance measure, reportable Category A agents include botulism and tularemia.
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Category A agents. [see PHEP 13.1] First report to a public health agency: [see PHEP 13.1] Public health control measures and initiation: This performance measure focuses on the timely initiation of public health control measures. Depending on the disease, measures range from identification (and removal, as feasible) of a source of infection, to immunization or prophylaxis of contacts, to exclusions from child care or food-handling. Awardees have some flexibility to determine which documented actions will count as an apppropriate control measure, though they should use the examples provided in Appendix C as a guide. Important points to note: Pre-Incident  This performance measure is meant to capture initiation of public health control measures, not completion.  In general, the intent of this performance measure is not to capture the first phone call to a healthcare provider to discuss a case patient, unless that discussion entails recommendations and/or education regarding specific control measures (e.g., calling a parent and/or a day care center to exclude an infectious child from child care due to E. coli or hepatitis A would count). Response  If a health department documents timely initiation of either (a) an appropriate control measure, (b) a recommendation for a control measure, (c) a decision not to initiate a control measure, or (c) inability to initiate a control measure despite an effort to do so, this will meet the intent of the measure and count toward the numerator.  Awardees may wish to consider standardizing an operational definition of initiation. Examples may include date of patient contact or date of interview, as long as these explicitly entail implementation or recommendation of control measures in addition to routine fact-finding.
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Examples of Category A agents in a sentence

  • All recipients and CRI local planning jurisdictions will be required to: • maintain fully developed plans to respond to both EID and Category A agents and • demonstrate readiness for a core set of response activities for both scenarios through some combination of drills, tabletop exercises, and functional exercises.

  • All jurisdictions developed transportation plans for sending Category A agents to the Montana Public Health Laboratory (PHL) that were signed by their local or tribal authorities.

  • All recipients and CRI local planning jurisdictions will be required to:  maintain fully developed plans to respond to both EID and Category A agents and  demonstrate readiness for a core set of response activities for both scenarios through some combination of drills, tabletop exercises, and functional exercises.

  • Awardees are required to provide data on the following diseases according to the specified case classification criteria noted in parentheses:4 ▪ Diseases associated with the following Category A agents: o Botulism (Clostridium botulinum), all types excluding infant ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ (confirmed) 4 Source: ▇▇▇▇://▇▇▇.▇▇▇.▇▇▇/osels/ph_surveillance/nndss/phs/files/NNDSS_event_code_list_February_2011_07_FINAL.

  • Category A agents: Category A agents can create situations that significantly impact community health.

  • These threats include viral pathogens known as "Category A" agents, which are considered by the Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") to pose a threat through natural emergence or if weaponized as an agent of bioterrorism.