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Epidemiology and transmission dynamics of the 1918?19 pandemic influenza in Florence, Italy

tetano

Editor, Senior Moderator
Vaccine
Volume 29, Supplement 2, 22 July 2011, Pages B27-B32
Historical Influenza Pandemics
doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.02.049 | How to Cite or Link Using DOI
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Epidemiology and transmission dynamics of the 1918?19 pandemic influenza in Florence, Italy

Caterina Rizzoa, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, Marco Ajellib, Stefano Merlerb, Andrea Pugliesec, Ilaria Barbettad, Stefania Salmasoa and Piero Manfredid

a National Centre for Epidemiology Surveillance and Health Promotion, Istituto Superiore di Sanit?, Viale Regina Elena, 299, Rome, Italy

b Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy

c Department of Mathematics, University of Trento, Italy

d Department of Statistics and Mathematics Applied to Economics, University of Pisa, Italy
Received 31 October 2010;
revised 10 January 2011;
accepted 15 February 2011.
Available online 12 July 2011.

Abstract

To investigate the 1918/19 influenza pandemic daily number of new hospitalizations in the only hospital in Florence (Central Italy) were analyzed. In order to describe the transmission dynamics of the 1918/1919 pandemic influenza a compartmental epidemic model was used. Model simulations show a high level of agreement with the observed epidemic data. By assuming both latent and infectious period equal to 1.5 days, the estimated basic reproduction number was View the MathML source (95% CI: 1.00?1.08) during the summer wave and View the MathML source (95% CI: 1.32?1.48) during the fall wave. Varying the length of the generation time or the estimation method, View the MathML source ranges from 1.32 to 1.71. The hospitalization rate was found significantly different between summer and fall waves. Notably, the estimated basic reproductive numbers are lower compared to those observed in other countries, while the age distribution of deaths resulted to be consistent with the patterns generally observed during of the 1918?1919 pandemic. Our knowledge on past pandemics, as for the 1918?19 Spanish influenza, would help improving mathematical modeling accuracy and understanding the mechanisms underlying the dynamics of future pandemics.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X11002842
 
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