Estimating Incidence Curves of Several Infections Using Symptom Surveillance Data

by Edward Goldstein, Benjamin J. Cowling, Allison E. Aiello, Saki Takahashi, Gary King, Ying Lu, Marc Lipsitch

We introduce a method for estimating incidence curves of several co-circulating infectious pathogens, where each infection has its own probabilities of particular symptom profiles. Our deconvolution method utilizes weekly surveillance data on symptoms from a defined population as well as additional data on symptoms from a sample of virologically confirmed infectious episodes. We illustrate this method by numerical simulations and by using data from a survey conducted on the University of Michigan campus. Last, we describe the data needs to make such estimates accurate.

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Estimating Incidence Curves of Several Infections Using Symptom Surveillance Data
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