Surveillance by age-class and prefecture for emerging infectious febrile diseases with respiratory symptoms, including COVID-19

Tomoaki Ueno; Junko Kurita; Tamie Sugawara; Yoshiyuki Sugishita; Yasushi Ohkusa; Hirokazu Kawanohara; Miwako Kamei

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.11.20061697 doi: medRxiv preprint 5 prescribed antibiotic drugs, antipyretic analgesics (AP), and multi-ingredient cold medications (MIC) and antidiarrheal and intestinal drugs, based on prescriptions filled at pharmacies. The system estimates the number of patients every day, as inferred from the number of prescriptions by prefecture by age group. As of the end of January 2020, approximately ten thousand pharmacies were participating, collectively accounting for about 20% of all pharmacies nationwide. The estimated numbers of patients are presented on the dedicated web site the following morning [5] . It is the most reliable real-time precision and timely surveillance for influenza [6] .