CMV Surveillance

Because Minnesota is the first state to offer universal newborn screening for congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) the Minnesota Department of Health is taking special care to monitor the impact. We are participating in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Surveillance for Emerging Threats to Mothers and Babies Network (SET-NET) to assess the feasibility for surveillance of congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV): Surveillance for Emerging Threats to Mothers and Babies (SET-NET) | CDC.

Surveillance for cCMV is statewide, population-level, laboratory and case-based, capturing information on newborns who were born in and reside in Minnesota. The surveillance system will use newborn screening results as well as electronic lab reporting of clinical testing to identify infants who test positive for CMV and should be included in the surveillance system.

The primary goals for surveillance are:

• Describe the epidemiology of cCMV in Minnesota
  • Determining if certain babies are more likely to have cCMV based on factors such as where they live, ethnic background, mother’s age, prematurity, and where they were born.
• Determine if newborn screening improves outcomes for infants born with cCMV
  • Determining if infants born with CMV live longer, receive better care, and have better outcomes when their infections are found by screening.

Planning is underway to add congenital CMV to the reportable disease rule so MDH can be alerted to children affected who were not found by newborn screening. The process involves writing a specific definition of which cases need to be reported and counted.

• Infectious Disease Reporting - MN Department of Health
• Reportable Disease Poster Infectious Disease Reporting - MN Department of Health