2.5. Approach for ongoing monitoring

In order to ensure an ongoing daily monitoring, we implement the statistical approach explained above in an automatic process and generate interactive maps for SIR, SMR and district specific risk estimates for SARS-CoV-2 incidence and mortality on a daily basis. The data management and data analysis is carried out with the R programming language, and is automatically started when the database of the Robert-Koch Institute is updated for the previous notification day at 00:00. The output of the analysis contains maps grouped by calendar weeks for daily and weekly SIR and SMR estimates (including age group and sex stratified estimates and counts for SARS-CoV-2 morbidity and mortality), as well as a daily updated map for district specific risk ratios based on the model configuration and selection process explained above. The daily updated interactive maps are then automatically integrated in an interactive web surface, the “Covid-19 Small Area Monitor” (CoV-19 SAM) (Rohleder 2020), which is programmed using JavaScript and the JavaScript library jQuery.