Identifying the regional drivers of influenza-like illness in Nova Scotia with dominance analysis

TL;DR

This study uses a novel dominance analysis method on Nova Scotia data to identify and rank regions driving influenza-like illness spread, revealing key spatial predictors for targeted disease control.

Contribution

Introduces a new method to recover and analyze the spatial network of influenza spread, identifying dominant regions and their predictors in Nova Scotia.

Findings

Identified key regions driving influenza spread.

Ranked regions based on their dominance in viral transmission.

Highlighted regional predictors influencing disease dynamics.

Abstract

The spread of viral pathogens is inherently a spatial process. While the temporal aspects of viral spread at the epidemiological level have been increasingly well characterized, the spatial aspects of viral spread are still understudied due to a striking absence of theoretical expectations of how spatial dynamics may impact the temporal dynamics of viral populations. Characterizing the spatial transmission and understanding the factors driving it are important for anticipating local timing of disease incidence and for guiding more informed control strategies. Using a unique data set from Nova Scotia, the objective of this study is to apply a new novel method that recovers a spatial network of the influenza-like viral spread where the regions in their dominance are identified and ranked. We, then, focus on identifying regional predictors of those dominant regions.