The stool specimens were obtained between January 2004 to June 2005 from 39 norovirus derived outbreaks and 31 sporadic cases in various geographical areas in Germany as well as from 40 healthy individuals without any sign of gastroenteritis.
Population genetic analyses suggest that A. flavus has a largely panmictic population structure [ 3, 4], however there is also evidence of clonally derived outbreaks associated with human infection [ 5].
Scientifically grounded reporting principles need to be established for interpretation of information derived from outbreak detection algorithms and predictive modeling.
For example, we took a conservative approach to estimating the underreporting multiplier for pathogens for which illness counts were derived from outbreak data (1 ); a less conservative approach would have increased estimated illnesses for these pathogens.
Until such methods are available and provide knowledge about the prevalence of viral presence in foods, the use of genetic profiles retrospectively derived from outbreak surveillance data is likely to improve foodborne viral surveillance.
However the BTV-8, BTV-6, and BTV-11 outbreaks in northern Europe, which started during 2006 and 2008, were not derived from outbreaks in contiguous territories.
We applied percentages derived from outbreak-associated illnesses for each etiology to the 9.6 million estimated annual illnesses assessed and attributed ≈4.9 million (≈51%) to plant commodities, ≈4.0 million (≈42%) to land animal commodities, and ≈600,000 (≈6%) to aquatic animal commodities (Table 1).
As parental strains we used a recent H5N1 LPAIV isolated in Germany in 2005, A/Teal/Germany/Wv632/2005 (H5N1) [43] as well as the first HPAIV H5N1 isolate derived from the outbreak in wild swans on the island of Rügen in February 2006, A/Swan/Germany/R65/06 (H5N1) [44].
First, the carrier strain may have been derived from the outbreak strain.
To evaluate if model derived alerts identified outbreak weeks more reliably than randomly chosen alerts, sensitivity and specificity calculations were repeated for three sets of randomly chosen dates.
