Data from: Incidence of influenza A(H3N2) virus infections in Hong Kong in a longitudinal sero-epidemiological study, 2009-2015
Data files
May 10, 2019 version files 144.68 KB
Abstract
Background: Many serologic studies were done during and after the 2009 influenza pandemic, to estimate the cumulative incidence of influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 virus infections, but there are few comparative estimates of the incidence of influenza A(H3N2) virus infections during epidemics.
Methods: We conducted a longitudinal serologic study in Hong Kong. We collected sera annually and tested samples from 2009-13 by HAI against the A/Perth/16/2009(H3N2) virus, and samples from 2013-15 against the A/Victoria/361/2011(H3N2) virus using the hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) assay. We estimated the cumulative incidence of infections based on 4-fold or greater rises in HAI titers in consecutive sera.
Results: There were four major H3N2 epidemics: (1) Aug-Oct 2010; (2) Mar-Jun 2012; (3) Jul-Oct 2013; and (4) Jun-Jul 2014. Between 514 516 and 614 619 relevant pairs of sera were available for each epidemic. We estimated that 98%, 2019%, 57% and 7% of the population were infected in each epidemic, respectively, with higher incidence in children in epidemics 1 and 4.
Conclusions: We estimatedfound that around 5% to 20% of the Hong Kong population were infectedre-infections in each of the four H3N2 epidemics that occurred from 2010 through 2014 were rare. The largest H3N2 epidemic occurred with the lowest level of pre-epidemic immunity.