Southern Hemisphere Influenza and Vaccine Effectiveness Research and Surveillance

Huang, Qiu Sue; Turner, Nikki; Baker, Michael G; Williamson, Deborah A; Wong, Conroy; Webby, Richard; Widdowson, Marc-Alain

For other more specific risk factors (e.g. host factors such as comorbidities, and environmental factors such as housing conditions), there are limited data available on their distribution in the population. Consequently, it is difficult to assess the importance of the risk factor data collected. There are several comparison/control groups such as hospital-based control populations without respiratory illness, serosurvey participants as a control group and SARI/ILI testnegative controls. These controls could be compared with SARI/ILI cases to estimate the importance of specific risk factors for influenza infection and related severe/moderate diseases including socio-economic, underlying medical conditions, health intervention, health service utilization, and environmental and behavioural factors.