{"id":3403,"date":"2014-04-15T15:55:25","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T14:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/?p=3403"},"modified":"2014-07-15T15:55:41","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T14:55:41","slug":"the-spatiotemporal-association-of-non-prescription-retail-sales-with-cases-during-the-2009-influenza-pandemic-in-great-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/2014\/04\/the-spatiotemporal-association-of-non-prescription-retail-sales-with-cases-during-the-2009-influenza-pandemic-in-great-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"The spatiotemporal association of non-prescription retail sales with cases during the 2009 influenza pandemic in Great Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This study by a research team including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/kbs\/profiles\/staff\/fearne_andrew.html\">Professor Andrew Fearne<\/a> of Kent Business School assessed whether retail sales of non-prescription products can be used for syndromic surveillance and whether it can detect influenza activity at different spatial scales. A secondary objective was to assess whether changes in purchasing behaviour were related to public health advice or levels of media or public interest.<\/p>\n<p>At a national scale there was no significant correlation between retail sales of symptom remedies and cases for the whole pandemic period in 2009. At the regional scale, a minority of regions showed statistically significant positive correlations between cases and sales of adult \u2018cold and flu\u2019 remedies and cough remedies (3.2%, 5\/156, 3.8%, 6\/156), but a greater number of regions showed a significant positive correlation between cases and symptomatic remedies for children (35.6%, 55\/156). Significant positive correlations between cases and sales of thermometers and antiviral hand gels\/wash were seen at both spatial scales (Cor 0.477 (95% CI 0.171 to 0.699); 0.711 (95% CI 0.495 to 0.844)). We found no significant association between retail sales and media reporting or Internet search volume.<\/p>\n<p>This study provides evidence that the British public responded appropriately to health messaging about hygiene. Non-prescription retail sales at a national level are not useful for the detection of cases. However, at finer spatial scales, in particular age-groups, retail sales may help augment existing surveillance and merit further study.<\/p>\n<p>This research was published in the April 2014 issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/bmjopen.bmj.com\/content\/4\/4\/e004869.abstract\">British Medical Journal Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This study by a research team including Professor Andrew Fearne of Kent Business School assessed whether retail sales of non-prescription products can be used for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/2014\/04\/the-spatiotemporal-association-of-non-prescription-retail-sales-with-cases-during-the-2009-influenza-pandemic-in-great-britain\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2414,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3404,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403\/revisions\/3404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}