Influenza Humans Commons^™

Detecting Signals Of Seasonal Influenza Severity Through Age Dynamics, Elizabeth C Lee, Cécile Viboud, Lone Simonsen, Farid Khan, Shweta Bansal

Global Health Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Measures of population-level influenza severity are important for public health planning, but estimates are often based on case-fatality and case-hospitalization risks, which require multiple data sources, are prone to surveillance biases, and are typically unavailable in the early stages of an outbreak. To address the limitations of traditional indicators, we propose a novel severity index based on influenza age dynamics estimated from routine physician diagnosis data that can be used retrospectively and for early warning.

METHODS: We developed a quantitative 'ground truth' severity benchmark that synthesizes multiple traditional severity indicators from publicly available influenza surveillance data in the United …