Community -and hospital laboratory-based surveillance for respiratory viruses

Traditional surveillance for respiratory viruses relies on symptom detection and laboratory detection during medically attended encounters for acute respiratory infection/influenza-like illness (ARI/ILI). Ecological momentary reporting using text messages is a novel method for surveillance. This study compares respiratory viral activity detected through longitudinal community-based surveillance using text message responses for sample acquisition and testing to respiratory viral activity obtained from hospital laboratory data from the same community. We demonstrate a significant correlation between community- and hospital laboratory-based surveillance for most respiratory viruses, although the relative proportions of viruses detected in the community and hospital differed significantly.