Early Characterization of the Severity and Transmissibility of Pandemic Influenza Using Clinical Episode Data from Multiple Populations.

ABSTRACT: The potential rapid availability of large-scale clinical episode data during the next influenza pandemic suggests an opportunity for increasing the speed with which novel respiratory pathogens can be characterized. Key intervention decisions will be determined by both the transmissibility of the novel strain (measured by the basic reproductive number R0) and its individual-level severity. The 2009 pandemic illustrated that estimating individual-level severity, as described by the proportion pC of infections that result in clinical cases, can remain uncertain for a prolonged period of time. Here, we use 50 distinct US military populations during 2009 as a retrospective cohort to test the hypothesis that real-time encounter data combined with disease dynamic models can be used to bridge this

SUBMITTER: Riley P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4581836 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature