Estimating Incidence Curves of Several Infections Using Symptom Surveillance Data

Goldstein, Edward; Cowling, Benjamin J.; Aiello, Allison E.; Takahashi, Saki; King, Gary; Lu, Ying; Lipsitch, Marc

We introduce a method for estimating incidence curves of several co-circulating infectious pathogens, where each infection has its own probabilities of particular symptom profiles. Our deconvolution method utilizes weekly surveillance data on symptoms from a defined population as well as additional data on symptoms from a sample of virologically confirmed infectious episodes. We illustrate this method by numerical simulations and by using data from a survey conducted on the University of Michigan campus. Last, we describe the data needs to make such estimates accurate.