Abstract
Influenza is active during the winter and spring in the city of Beijing, which has a typical temperate climate with four clear distinct seasons. The clinical and laboratory surveillance data for influenza have been used to construct critical indicators for influenza activities in the community, and previous studies have reported varying degrees of association between laboratory-confirmed influenza specimens and outpatient consultation rates of influenza-like illness in subtropical cities. However, few studies have reported on this issue for cities in temperate regions, especially in developing countries. Furthermore, the mechanism behind age-specific seasonal epidemics remains unresolved, although it has been widely discussed. We utilized a wavelet analysis method to monitor the coherence of weekly percentage of laboratory-confirmed influenza specimens with the weekly outpatient consultation rates of influenza-like illness in Beijing, China. We first examined the seasonal pattern of laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza A (subtyped into seasonal A(H1N1) and A(H3N2) and pandemic virus A(H1N1) pdm09) and influenza B separately within the period from 2008–2015; then, we detected the coherence of clinical and laboratory surveillance data in this district, specially examining weekly time series of age-specific epidemics of influenza-like illnesses in the whole study period for three age categories (age 0–5, 5–15 and 25–60). We found that influenza A and B were both active in winter but were not always seasonally synchronous in Beijing. Synchronization between age ranges was found in most epidemic peaks from 2008–2015. Our findings suggested that peaks of influenza-like illness in individuals aged 0–5 and 5–15 years consistently appeared ahead of those of adults, implying the possibility that schoolchildren may lead epidemic fluctuations.
Highlights
In temperate developed regions, seasonal influenza has been well studied and be known as one of the main causes of substantial morbidity and mortality [1]
It is usually assumed that the reported influenza activity is generally representative of the timing of influenza activity and that influenza virus infections can be identified in the laboratory
Influenza epidemics in temperate latitudes are usually characterized by the dominance of influenza B or one of two subtypes of influenza A, A/H3N2 or A/H1N1
Summary
Seasonal influenza has been well studied and be known as one of the main causes of substantial morbidity and mortality [1]. It is usually assumed that the reported influenza activity is generally representative of the timing of influenza activity and that influenza virus infections can be identified in the laboratory. Many countries collect data on laboratoryconfirmed influenza infection parallel to clinical surveillance to provide more accurate and timely information about influenza virus activity than information from conducting clinical surveillance alone. There has been important progress in influenza surveillance systems in recent years, the volume of information on the surveillance of ILI and laboratoryconfirmed virus activity remains too sparse for detailed analyses at the province and city levels even in developed countries [4, 5]
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