In some influenza seasons, morbidity and mortality closely follow the expected seasonal variation. In these years, approaches such as SerflingÃs model and seasonal-based syndromic outbreak detectors, in use in EARS, work well. In other years, though, short but intense variations occur in addition to the longer term seasonal variation. These intense outbreaks, which are often multimodal, have important implications for both syndromic surveillance and influenza epidemiology. Unfortunately, they are both difficult to characterize and poorly understood. In this paper, we apply techniques from time-frequency distribution theory to identify the temporal location, duration, and amplitude of intense outbreaks occurring in the presence of longer time scale variations.
Infectious Disease
The objective of this work was to elucidate clinical features for distinguishing inhalational anthrax (IA) from ED patients.
Learn about a highly infectious resistant tuberculosis outbreak among recent immigrants & the multijurisdictional public health response. Recognize basics about tuberculosis & anticipate difficulties with immigrants and resistant strains. Enhance epidemiologic response and treatment of tuberculosis that emerged across borders requiring coordinated response from employers, government, and individuals.
Epidemiologists, public health agencies and scientists increasingly augment traditional surveillance systems with alternative data sources such as, digital surveillance systems utilizing news reports and social media, over-the-counter medication sales, and school absenteeism. Similar to school absenteeism, an increase in reservation cancellations could serve as an early indicator of social disruption including a major public health event. In this study, we evaluated whether a rise in restaurant table availabilities could be associated with an increase in disease incidence.
Objective
The objective of this study is to evaluate whether trends in online restaurant table reservations can be used as an early indicator for a disease outbreak.
Research has shown that Canadian First Nation (FN) populations were disproportionately affected by the 2009 H1N1 influenza pan- demic. However, the mechanisms for the disproportionate outcomes are not well understood. Possibilities such as healthcare access, in- frastructure and housing issues, and pre-existing comorbidities have been suggested. We estimated the odds of hospitalization and inten- sive care unit admission for cases of H1N1 influenza among FN liv- ing in Manitoba, Canada, to determine the effect of location of residency and other factors on disease outcomes during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
Objective
We sought to measure from surveillance data the effect of prox- imity to an urban centre (rurality) and other risk factors, (e.g., age, residency on a FN reservation, and pandemic wave) on hospitaliza- tion and intensive care unit admission for severe influenza.
Drug sales data as an early indicator in syndromic surveillance has attracted particular interest in recent years, however previous studies were mostly conducted in developed countries or areas. In China, many people (around 60%) choose self-medication as their first option when they encounter a health problem, and electronic sales information system is gradually used by retail pharmacies, which makes drug sales data become a promising data source for syndromic surveillance in China.
Objective
To use an unconventional data - pharmaceutical sales surveillance for the early detection of respiratory and gastrointestinal epidemics in rural China.
Norovirus infection results in considerable morbidity in the United States where an estimated 21 million illnesses, 70,000 hospitalizations, and 800 deaths are caused by NV annually. Additionally, NV is responsible for approximately 50% of foodborne outbreaks. Between January 2008 and June 2012, 875 NV outbreaks were reported to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH). To assist in detecting possible disease outbreaks such as NV, VDH utilizes the web-based Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) to monitor and detect public health events across Virginia. ESSENCE performs automated parsing of chief complaint text into 10 syndrome categories, including a non-specific GI syndrome that serves as a proxy for GI illnesses like NV.
Objective
To assess the relationship between emergency department and urgent care center chief complaint data for gastrointestinal illness and reported norovirus (NV) outbreaks to develop an early warning tool for NV outbreak activity. The tool will provide an indicator of increasing NV outbreak activity in the community allowing for earlier public health action to mitigate NV outbreaks.
The nation’s first operational infectious disease forecast station, modeled after warning protocols developed in the meteorology community, was activated in 2011. The approach was originally pioneered in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake.
Objective:
To evaluate the sociological effect on indigenous biological event signature recognition and community resilience due to the operational activities of an infectious disease forecast station.
Local, national, and global infectious disease surveillance systems have been implemented to meet the demands of monitoring, detecting, and reporting disease outbreaks and prevalence. Varying surveillance goals and geographic reach have led to multiple and disparate systems, each using unique combinations of data streams to meet surveillance criteria. In order to assess the utility and effectiveness of different data streams for global disease surveillance, a comprehensive survey of current human, animal, plant, and marine surveillance systems and data streams was undertaken. Information regarding surveillance systems and data streams has been (and continues to be) systematically culled from websites, peer-reviewed literature, government documents, and subject-matter expert consultations.
Objective:
The goal of this project is to identify systems and data streams relevant for infectious disease biosurveillance. This effort is part of a larger project evaluating existing and potential data streams for use in local, national, and international infectious disease surveillance systems with the intent of developing tools to provide decision-makers with timely information to predict, prepare for, and mitigate the spread of disease.
To develop and implement an effective program of rabies eradication in Ukraine in 2008 was founded the unique collection of samples of pathological materials confirmed as positive in rabies at the regional veterinary laboratories of Ukraine. The collection is constantly updated and to present moment it includes 1389 samples from all regions of Ukraine, selected from 17 animal species and humans.
Objective:
To identify the presence of genetic clusters of rabies virus at the territory of Ukraine and to determine the degree of activity of rabies vaccines against these genetic clusters.