Patterns of seasonal and pandemic influenza-associated health care and mortality in Ontario, Canada.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Mathematical and statistical models are used to project the future time course of infectious disease epidemics and the expected future burden on health care systems and economies. Influenza is a particularly important disease in this context because it causes annual epidemics and occasional pandemics. In order to forecast health care utilization during epidemics-and the effects of hospitalizations and deaths on the contact network and, in turn, on transmission dynamics-modellers must make assumptions about the lengths of time between infection, visiting a physician, being admitted to hospital, leaving hospital, and death. More reliable forecasts could be be made if the distributions of times between these types of events ("delay distributions") were known.

Methods

SUBMITTER: Li M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6731609 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature