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The “Disease Outbreaks” panel labels each item with one of three categorical levels: ALERT, WARNING, or WATCH. This page documents how that label is derived so the value is reproducible from the inputs displayed on the panel.

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Editorial weights

Levels are assigned by a keyword classifier in scripts/_disease-outbreaks-helpers.mjs::detectAlertLevel that matches whole-word tokens (case-insensitive) in the concatenated item title and description.
LevelKeywords (any match)
alertoutbreak, emergency, epidemic, pandemic
warningwarning, spread, cases increasing
watch(fallback when no keyword matches)
The keyword set is editorial — it is not derived from a published classification index (ECDC, WHO EWARN, ProMED). Treat the level as an opinionated newsroom triage signal, not a clinical assessment.

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Inputs

The classifier sees the item’s title and desc fields after they are normalized by the per-source parser:
  • WHO Disease Outbreak News (whoNormalizeItem)
  • HealthMap / ProMED RSS (rssNormalizeItem)
  • TGH (tghNormalizeItem)
There are no numeric scoring weights. The label is purely categorical and the order shown in the panel is alert > warning > watch.

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Known limitations

  1. Newsroom phrasing, not epidemiology. A press release that uses the word “outbreak” once will be promoted to alert even if the situation is minor. Conversely, a serious situation reported without any of the keywords will fall through to watch.
  2. English-only keywords. Non-English titles will systematically under-classify until the source is translated upstream.
  3. No multi-word context. “False outbreak rumor” will still match outbreak and be promoted to alert.
These limitations are accepted for now because the source feeds are predominantly English-language press releases and the panel is positioned as a “what to look at next” surface rather than a risk score.

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Change protocol

If the keyword sets in DISEASE_ALERT_KEYWORDS or DISEASE_WARNING_KEYWORDS change:
  1. Bump ALERT_LEVEL_METHODOLOGY_VERSION in the same file. The seeder stamps this onto the published payload as alertLevelMethodologyVersion, so a bump observably propagates to clients and the canonical key.
  2. Update the table above to match.
  3. Add a regression test in tests/disease-outbreaks-seed.test.mjs covering the new keyword behavior + at least one expected non-match (substring guard).
  4. Note the change in the next release’s changelog so cached / pre-rendered payloads can be invalidated if necessary.

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See also

  • Source: scripts/_disease-outbreaks-helpers.mjs → detectAlertLevel
  • Consumer: src/components/DiseaseOutbreaksPanel.ts
  • Tests: tests/disease-outbreaks-seed.test.mjs
  • Tracking: #3791
  • Pattern reference: CII risk scoring methodology (same disclosure pattern, larger scope)