Using Routine Surveillance Data to Estimate the Epidemic Potential of Emerging Zoonoses: Application to the Emergence of US Swine Origin Influenza A H3N2v Virus

摘要

Background Prior to emergence in human populations, zoonoses such as SARS cause occasional infections in human populations exposed to reservoir species. The risk of widespread epidemics in humans can be assessed by monitoring the reproduction number R (average number of persons infected by a human case). However, until now, estimating R required detailed outbreak investigations of human clusters, for which resources and expertise are not always available. Additionally, existing methods do not correct for important selection and under-ascertainment biases. Here, we present simple estimation methods that overcome many of these limitations.