The city Health Department says its disease data collection system was so swamped during the pandemic that it needs to spend $5 million to overhaul it.

“The current state [Electronic Data Reporting Infrastructure]  was not able to process the overwhelming reporting of COVID 19,” the department’s Fund for Public Health said in its solicitation for bids on a $5 million, three-year contract to upgrade its data system.

“The EDRI Replacement solution design must accommodate new sources of health information to support public health response, including outbreak activities,” the proposal says.

All parts of the Big Apple’s health-care system were under tremendous strain, including hospitals flooded with patients, during the COVID19 crisis.

The city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Division of Disease Control is responsible for the identification, surveillance, treatment, control and prevention of infectious diseases.

It is composed of seven bureaus covering communicable diseases, immunization, hepatitis, HIV and sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis control,  public health clinics and public health laboratory/management and systems coordination.

Surveillance teams across the bureaus collectively monitor and investigate more than 90 infectious diseases.

“DDC continuously updates its systems, databases, and infrastructure to improve the completeness of data and ensure efficient response to emergent infectious agent threats (e.g., COVID-19, Zika virus),” according to the bid proposal issued by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.

“DDC is embarking on an initiative to replace its current data standardization and cleaning processes to accommodate future surveillance needs and address existing issues that were highlighted during the
COVID-19 and other past communicable disease emergencies.”

The agency said it is implementing a “cloud-based solution” to expand its data collection capability.

A DOH rep told The Post in a statement Sunday, “The Health Department has had one of the best COVID reporting dashboards in the country and we aim to continue providing accurate, timely and accessible information to New Yorkers about outbreaks that may be affecting our city.”

An agency source added, “This is really meat and potatoes for us.

“We have a really strong data team. During COVID, a lot of the data that we reported entailed a lot of staff time. We’re shopping for systems that can be even more efficient.”

The department projects that the system’s annual patient volume could range from 4,037,736 per year to 13,618,341 through 2032.

Meanwhile, the number of messages processed could average 11.5 million to a high of 17.5 billion by 2032.

Health officials said they also want to process and retain all negative report results as well as positive results for diseases such as syphilis.

The amount of patients and related messages skyrocketed during the COVID-19 outbreak.

For example, there were 320,697 patients and 2,836,697 messages processed in 2019.

That number of patients jumped to 12,721,061 in 2020 and 17,101,298 in 2021.

The volume  dropped to 4,559,413 patients in 2022 as the pandemic faded, according Health Department records.