Meteorologically favourable zones for seasonal influenza A and B in Hong Kong: abridged secondary publication
KC Chong1, PKS Chan2, TC Lee3, WB Goggins1, P Wu4, CKC Lai2, KSC Fung5
1 Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
2 Department of Microbiology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
3 Hong Kong Observatory, Hong Kong SAR, China
4 School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
5 Department of Pathology, United Christian Hospital, Hong Kong SAR, China
- An accurate risk alert system for influenza epidemics may promote public awareness of the risk of influenza infection. We used a supervised discretisation approach to establish meteorologically favourable zones for influenza epidemics in Hong Kong.
- Using laboratory-confirmed data from four hospitals in Hong Kong for the period 2004 to 2019, we demonstrated satisfactory classification performance of meteorologically favourable zones based on ambient temperature and relative humidity. The performance was validated by the use of influenza-like illness plus, which is a combined metric comprising clinical diagnosis and laboratory data.
- Favourable zones for influenza A involved either high temperatures and high humidity in the hot season, or low temperatures in the cold season, whereas favourable zones for influenza B simply required cold conditions.
- Our findings may help public health and meteorology officials to establish a meteorology-based warning system for increased influenza activity.