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J Clin Virol . Self-reported influenza and influenza-like symptoms in U.S. adults age 18-64 between September 1, 2019 and April 15, 2020

tetano

Editor, Senior Moderator
J Clin Virol


. 2020 Dec 3;134:104709.
doi: 10.1016/j.jcv.2020.104709. Online ahead of print.
Self-reported influenza and influenza-like symptoms in U.S. adults age 18-64 between September 1, 2019 and April 15, 2020


Robert P Lennon[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Erin L Miller[SUP] 2 [/SUP], Bethany Snyder[SUP] 3 [/SUP], Lauren Jodi Van Scoy[SUP] 4 [/SUP]



Affiliations

Abstract

Background: The Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet) can indicate the presence of novel, widespread community pathogens. Comparing week-to-week reported influenza-like illness percentages may identify the time of year a novel pathogen is introduced. However, changes in health-seeking behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic call in to question the reliability of 2019-2020 ILINet data as a comparison to prior years, potentially rendering this system less reliable as a novel pathogen surveillance tool. Corroboration of trends seen in the 2019-2020 ILINet data lends confidence to the validity of those trends. This study compares predicted versus reported influenza and influenza-like illnesses in vaccinated adults as a surrogate measure of novel pathogen surveillance.
Methods: An online survey was used to ask US adults their influenza vaccination status, whether they were diagnosed with influenza after vaccination, and whether they experienced an influenza-like illness other than flu.
Results: Prevalence of self-reported flu diagnosis in adults age 18-64 who received the flu vaccine between September 1, 2019 and April 15, 2020 (n = 3,225) was 5.8 %, while self-reported flu or flu-like illness (without a flu diagnosis) was 17.9 %.
Conclusion: Flu and flu-like illness in this sample of flu-vaccinated U.S. adults is significantly higher than predicted, consistent with substantially higher ILI's in 2019-20 compared to ILI's from 2018-19, suggesting that the ILI values reported during the COVID-19 pandemic may be appropriate for comparison to prior years.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Infections; Influenza.
 
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