Covid-19 Coronavirus

Notifications to Public Health

Notifiable Diseases | How to Report Notifiable Diseases | Causative Agents |  Legal duties of diagnostic laboratories | Legal duties of test providers

Notifiable diseases, causative agents and contamination

Public Health Isle of Man aims to detect potential outbreaks of disease and epidemics as rapidly as possible.

'Notification' is the term used to refer to the statutory duties for reporting notifiable diseases, causative agents and contamination as specified in the:

Notifiable diseases

Legal duties of medical practitioners

A registered medical practitioner must notify Public Health where they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that a patient

a) has a notifiable disease;

b) has an infection which presents or could present significant harm to human health; or

c) is contaminated in a manner which presents or could present significant harm to human health.

Contamination could be taken to mean a wide variety of chemical, biological or radiological materials that would pose a significant risk to human health (e.g. asbestos, lead in water, exposure to radiation).

How to Report Notifiable Diseases

We treat all personal information as confidential. We will not tell the person involved that you contacted us, but we will not be able to tell you what action is taken as a result of your information. 

The registered medical practitioner must notify Public Health in writing or by email within 3 days of the date the notifiable disease was suspected.

For urgent notifications please orally notify Public Health as soon as is reasonably practicable.

Do not wait for laboratory confirmation of a suspected infection or contamination before notification.

Please include all required fields. See Notification Requirements for more details

Phone: +44 1624 642639

Post: The Proper Officer, Public Health, Cronk Coar, Noble’s Hospital, Strang, Douglas, Isle of Man, IM4 4RJ.

Secure email: publichealthconfidential@gov.im

Schedule 1 - Notifiable Diseases

  • Acute encephalitis
  • Acute meningitis
  • Acute poliomyelitis
  • Acute infectious hepatitis
  • Anthrax
  • Botulism
  • Brucellosis
  • Cholera
  • COVID-19
  • Diphtheria
  • Enteric fever (typhoid or paratyphoid fever)
  • Food poisoning 
  • Haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS)
  • Infectious bloody diarrhoea
  • Invasive group A streptococcal disease and Scarlet fever
  • Legionnaires' disease
  • Leprosy
  • Malaria
  • Measles
  • Meningococcal septicaemia
  • Mpox (Monkeypox)
  • Mumps
  • Plague
  • Rabies
  • Rubella
  • Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
  • Scarlet fever
  • Smallpox
  • Tetanus
  • Tuberculosis
  • Typhus
  • Viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF)
  • Whooping cough
  • Yellow fever

Causative Agents

Legal duties of Diagnostic Laboratories

The diagnostic laboratory must notify Public Health where a causative agent in a human sample is identified. This now includes the detection of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID), influenza virus and the Mpox virus.

You can do this by emailing publichealthconfidential@gov.im

The notification must be provided in writing within14 days if influenza is detected, or 24 hours for COVID-19, beginning with the day on which any other causative agent is identified.

IMPORTANT: Please include patient's telephone number on the form. For a full list of what to include, see Notification Requirements.

Legal duties of test providers

  • All test providers (i.e. any person carrying out point of care tests) must notify Public Health in accordance of any positive test result for either SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) or influenza

  • You can do this by emailing publichealthconfidential@gov.im

  • The notification must be provided in writing within14 days if influenza is detected, or 24 hours for COVID-19, beginning with the day on which any other causative agent is identified

  • For information on what to include, see Notification Requirements

Schedule 2 - Causative Agents

Updated: December 2023

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