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Monitoring Influenza Virus Survival Outside the Host Using Real-Time Cell Analysis
Published on: February 20, 2021
Influenza surveillance using data from a telemedicine centre
Eva Blozik1, Chantal Grandchamp, Jan von Overbeck
1Swiss Centre for Telemedicine Medgate, Gellertstrasse 19, 4020, Basel, Switzerland. eva.blozik@medgate.ch
Objectives:
This study aimed at investigating whether data from medical teleconsultations may contribute to influenza surveillance.
Methods:
International Classification of Primary Care 2nd Edition (ICPC-2) codes were used to analyse the proportion of teleconsultations due to influenza-related symptoms. Results were compared with the weekly Swiss Sentinel reports.
Results:
When using the ICPC-2 code for fever we could reproduce the seasonal influenza peaks of the winter seasons 07/08, 08/09 and 09/10 as depicted by the Sentinel data. For the pandemic influenza 09/10, we detected a much higher first peak in summer 2009 which correlated with a potential underreporting in the Sentinel system.
Conclusions:
ICPC-2 data from medical teleconsultations allows influenza surveillance in real time and correlates very well with the Swiss Sentinel system.
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