All about Flutracking
Welcome to Flutracking.net, the project which harnesses the power of the internet for tracking influenza. By taking part, you'll not only be contributing to scientific research, you will be helping to track influenza in your local community and Australia-wide! A simple online survey that takes less than 15 seconds each week during flu season can tell us so much.
Flutracking was launched in the Australian winter of 2006 with 400 people participating throughout the year. In the winter of 2007 approximately 800 "Flutrackers" completed a 10 to 15 second online survey about flu-like symptoms each week. By comparing the rate of symptoms between vaccinated and unvaccinated particpants we were able detect when influenza struck because the unvaccinated people had much higher rates of illness than the vaccinated people.
The main aims of Flutracking are to develop a system that can rapidly determine:
- the onset of influenza in Australia and subregions
- the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine
- the severity of circulating influenza strains
- if influenza strains have changed
Weekly survey
After the volunteers are recruited and provide informed consent they receive a weekly email from us during the traditional influenza season (from May 1 to October 30 usually). The email contains a link to an online survey form. On the first visit they provide the following information:
- Date of birth
- Receipt of influenza vaccine in the current and the preceding year
- Face to face contact with patients
- Postcode of residence
- Fever
- Cough
- Number of days absent from normal duties(
- Muscle aches in 2007, deleted for 2008)
- (Sudden onset of fever, muscle aches, AND cough in 2006, 2007, deleted for 2008)
2008 Survey
In 2008 we hoped to double our recruitment to approximately 1500 participants, however, by the first day of the winter survey 5th May, 2008 we had 1,666 participants registered to answer on behalf of themselves and another 652 household members - for a total of 2,318. The facility to allow a participant to answer on behalf of other household members is new in 2008 and is responsible for much of the increased recruitment. In 2008, given that some participants would be answering for multiple people, we reduced the number of questions on the survey to make it faster to complete. Participants are only asked about cough and fever, if they answer yes to either then a question appears asking them about absence from work or normal duties. We deleted the question about muscle aches and acute onset of symptoms as it was felt that they contributed little to the discrimination of influenza from other respiratory illness. Several large organisations agreed to circulate the invitation to participate across their corporate email systems including faculties at the University of Newcastle and the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services. Excellent uptake within Tasmania should provide a useful comparison with findings from NSW.
Fever and Cough by Vaccination Status to 7th September, 2008.
2007 Survey
2007 was a bad year for influenza, and despite rumours circulating in the media that the influenza vaccine "was not working", Flutracking data suggested it was protecting vaccinated people at least as effectively as in 2006.
Results
The Figure below compares the rate of fever and cough among vaccinated and unvaccinated participants and the peak week of influenza activity detected by other surveillance systems for influenza. Indicators of influenza activity peaked in the week ending
