Medicina de Emergência: Acesso Aberto
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Syndromic Surveillance using Twitter Data

Ross Sparks, Mark Cameron, Sam Woolford, Bella Robinson, Robert Power and John Colton

The Federal Department of Health website in Australia on 22 October reported that in 2014 influenza A (H1N1) dominated across most jurisdictions throughout the season, however influenza A (H3N2) was predominant in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, with late season increases noted in Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania. This paper used daily counts of flu symptom tweets to describe the differences in the outbreaks across the various states and territories in Australia for the 2014 season. However, the tweet data indicates a two wave flu outbreak for Victoria that was not picked up in this report. This paper also illustrates that the flu outbreaks for flu in some states were no different to the 2013 flu season while in others it was significantly greater for a long period. The varying nature of the burden of this disease in Australia is outlined in this paper but the variable nature of the outbreaks across Australia is difficult to explain or understand. Future efforts should be devoted to understanding these differences.