Google, twitter or grippenet make it possible to follow the evolution of epidemics almost in real time. A precious help to limit the transmission of viruses.
Americans are breathing, the peak of the epidemic seems to have passed. Just a few weeks ago, the United States was hit by a large-scale flu wave. New York State was particularly affected. Its governor had declared a state of health emergency and authorized pharmacists to vaccinate babies and young people under 18. A strong and repressed response. But it was not the weekly bulletins from the Atlanta-based Center for Desease Control and Prevention (CDC) that enabled health officials to respond swiftly.
For several weeks, the network alert put in place by Google had recorded a very significant increase in the number of queries concerning the flu. “Because the relative frequency of certain queries is strongly correlated with the percentage of doctor visits where a patient presents with flu-like symptoms, we can accurately estimate the current level of influenza activity per week in each region of the states. -Unis, with a publication delay of about a day, ”explained the authors of a study published in Nature. 24 hours against a week with the CDC. Launched in 2008 in the United States, this service offered by Google now exists in around fifteen countries.
Are social networks on the way to supplanting health agencies in this area? The number of users and the speed in the exchange of information are two major assets in the event of an epidemic alert. For example, researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (United States) are working on an algorithm capable of mapping the spread of influenza epidemics based on tweets from users. The system is able to differentiate tweets from people claiming to be infected with the flu from those who fear it.
In France, the site fluNet, set up by Inserm and Pierre et Marie Curie University, in coordination with the Institut de Veille Sanitaire, allows everyone to participate in influenza surveillance on a voluntary, anonymous and voluntary basis. The data collected makes it possible to know in real time the influenza situation in France, and to study the way in which the disease is spread.
Other sites or applications analyze the exchanges on different viruses. We knew that the apps available on smartphones made it possible to take control of their health, we are now discovering that they will also protect the health of others. A real revolution which would undoubtedly have made it possible to limit the scope of the great scourges of the last century such as influenza or AIDS.
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