Abstract
The emergence of the 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) virus in North America and its subsequent global spread highlights the public health need for early warning of infectious disease outbreaks. Event-based biosurveillance, based on local- and regional-level Internet media reports, is one approach to early warning as well as to situational awareness. This study analyses media reports in Mexico collected by the Argus biosurveillance system between 1 October 2007 and 31 May 2009. Results from Mexico are compared with the United States and Canadian media reports obtained from the HealthMap system. A significant increase in reporting frequency of respiratory disease in Mexico during the 2008-9 influenza season relative to that of 2007-8 was observed (p<0.0001). The timing of events, based on media reports, suggests that respiratory disease was prevalent in parts of Mexico, and was reported as unusual, much earlier than the microbiological identification of the pandemic virus. Such observations suggest that abnormal respiratory disease frequency and severity was occurring in Mexico throughout the winter of 2008-2009, though its connection to the emergence of the 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) virus remains unclear.
Highlights
The emergence in North America and global spread of the novel 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) virus of swine origin was unanticipated in the spring of 2009 by governments and health agencies around the world
In an automated process, local, native-language Internet media reports, including blogs and official sources, e.g. World Health Organization (WHO) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), and interprets their relevance according to a specific set of concepts and keywords relevant to infectious disease surveillance
It illustrates that respiratory disease was prevalent in parts of Mexico, and reported as unusual, much earlier than the microbiological identification of the pandemic virus in late April 2009 [14]
Summary
The emergence in North America and global spread of the novel 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) virus of swine origin was unanticipated in the spring of 2009 by governments and health agencies around the world. The Argus system, a web-based global biosurveillance system hosted at the Georgetown University Medical Center (Washington, DC, United States) and funded by the United States Government, is designed to report and track the evolution of biological events threatening human, plant and animal health globally, excluding the United States [5]. It collects, in an automated process, local, native-language Internet media reports, including blogs and official sources, e.g. World Health Organization (WHO) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), and interprets their relevance according to a specific set of concepts and keywords relevant to infectious disease surveillance (i.e. a taxonomy of media reporting of infectious disease). Elements of the taxonomy define direct indicators (i.e. reports of disease) and six categories of indirect indicators of disease (Table 1)
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