Apply the following scenario to the quiz questions, adapted from a WHO Disease Outbreak News from 2019.
On 16 August 2019, Regional Health Authorities in Andalusia, Spain, reported an outbreak of febrile
illness, sometimes with diarrhea, headache, confusion, and fetal loss. Routine testing from influenza-like illness surveillance programming was negative among the 222 persons affected across five regions of
Spain: Andalusia (214), Aragon (4), Extremadura (2), Castilla y Leon (1), and Madrid (1). Fifty-seven per
cent of cases are women including 38 pregnant women and 24% of cases are 65 years old or above (24 men and 25 women). Three deaths have been reported among elderly persons who were believed to be part of the event. On 23 August 2019, France, through the European Commission Early Warning and
Response System (EWRS), notified a travel related case in a foreign citizen with travel history to
Andalusia.
All of those affected have similar shopping habits. Those in the same region sometimes
overlapped in time and space for shopping or socially, though there was little mixing between regions
other than the French traveler. Both urban and rural persons were in the mix.
The first case seems to
have occurred 15 July, and the remainder generally at a rate of 5 or fewer cases a day through 06
September, except of a peak of 100 cases across 13-17 August.
Answer each with one paragraph
1. What is the clinical syndrome?
2. What information is missing that will allow you to construct an appropriate case definition?
3. If the exposure has to do with shopping, and case detection occurred a few weeks after the shoppingexperience, what might that say about incubation period? State limitations of your assertions
4. How do you think people are acquiring this illness? In particular what aspects of the object suggest
a respiratory versus an enteric (GI food borne) versus a blood borne transmitted illness? What are
examples of what you need to know to be able to tease these differences?
5. Set up a question that you will answer through analysis (Punnett, regression) What would you test?
Apply whatever assumptions you feel you must in order to do this.
Recent Comments