Spatio-temporal pattern analysis for evaluation of the spread of human infections with avian influenza A(H7N9) virus in China, 2013–2014

作者：Wen Dong, Kun Yang, Quanli Xu, Lin Liu, Juan Chen · 发表于：BMC Infectious Diseases · 年份：2017 · DOI：10.1186/s12879-017-2781-2 · 被引用次数：30 · 研究领域：Influenza Virus Research Studies、COVID-19 epidemiological studies、Data-Driven Disease Surveillance

BACKGROUND: A large number (n = 460) of A(H7N9) human infections have been reported in China from March 2013 through December 2014, and H7N9 outbreaks in humans became an emerging issue for China health, which have caused numerous disease outbreaks in domestic poultry and wild bird populations, and threatened human health severely. The aims of this study were to investigate the directional trend of the epidemic and to identify the significant presence of spatial-temporal clustering of influenza A(H7N9) human cases between March 2013 and December 2014. METHODS: Three distinct epidemic phases of A(H7N9) human infections were identified in this study. In each phase, standard deviational ellipse analysis was conducted to examine the directional trend of disease spreading, and retrospective space-time permutation scan statistic was then used to identify the spatio-temporal cluster patterns of H7N9 outbreaks in humans. RESULTS: The ever-changing location and the increasing size of the three identified standard deviational ellipses showed that the epidemic moved from east to southeast coast, and hence to some central regions, with a future epidemiological trend of continue dispersing to more central regions of China, and a few new human cases might also appear in parts of the western China. Furthermore, A(H7N9) human infections were clustering in space and time in the first two phases with five significant spatio-temporal clusters (p < 0.05), but there was no significant cluster ide...