Nowcasting (Short-Term Forecasting) of COVID-19 Hospitalizations Using Syndromic Healthcare Data, Sweden, 2020
Journal article, 2022
We report on local nowcasting (short-term forecasting) of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) hospitalizations based on syndromic (symptom) data recorded in regular healthcare routines in Östergötland County (population ≈465,000), Sweden, early in the pandemic, when broad laboratory testing was unavailable. Daily nowcasts were supplied to the local healthcare management based on analyses of the time lag between telenursing calls with the chief complaints (cough by adult or fever by adult) and COVID-19 hospitalization. The complaint cough by adult showed satisfactory performance (Pearson correlation coefficient r>0.80; mean absolute percentage error <20%) in nowcasting the incidence of daily COVID-19 hospitalizations 14 days in advance until the incidence decreased to <1.5/100,000 population, whereas the corresponding performance for fever by adult was unsatisfactory. Our results support local nowcasting of hospitalizations on the basis of symptom data recorded in routine healthcare during the initial stage of a pandemic.
Author
Armin Spreco
Region Östergötland
Linköping University
Anna Jöud
Skåne University Hospital
Lund University
Olle Eriksson
Linköping University
Kristian Soltesz
Lund University
Reidar Källström
Region Östergötland
Linköping University
Örjan Dahlström
Linköping University
Henrik Eriksson
Linköping University
Joakim Ekberg
Linköping University
Region Östergötland
Carl Oscar Jonson
Linköping University
Region Östergötland
Carl Johan Fraenkel
Skåne University Hospital
Torbjörn Lundh
University of Gothenburg
Chalmers, Mathematical Sciences, Applied Mathematics and Statistics
Philip Gerlee
Chalmers, Mathematical Sciences, Applied Mathematics and Statistics
University of Gothenburg
Fredrik Gustafsson
Linköping University
Toomas Timpka
Region Östergötland
Linköping University
Emerging Infectious Diseases
1080-6040 (ISSN) 1080-6059 (eISSN)
Vol. 28 3 564-571Subject Categories
Geriatrics
Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy
Other Health Sciences
DOI
10.3201/eid2803.210267
PubMed
35201737