Town Crier “Briefs from the Region” (2) – 6/26/20
Alex Washburne, a researcher in the Bozeman Disease Ecology Lab at MSU, published a paper this week using data from ILINet, a database created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that tracks patients who check into medical clinics with influenza-like illnesses. By examining the number of visits reported each week over the last decade and comparing them to data in March of this year, Washburne identified a surge of visits that parallels increases in COVID-19 cases, meaning there may have been many cases of the coronavirus disease that weren’t initially identified as such.