The Bas-Rhin is one of the two selected pilot departments (with the Alpes-Maritimes) for the National Ronfnet/Covidnet project. Volunteers are sought in the Bas-Rhin to better monitor and prevent epidemics such as flu or covid.
Son n ° 1 – Volunteers sought in the Bas -Rhin to prevent influenza, covid and bronchiolitis epidemics
Thierry Blanchon – Doctor and CO Project Manager Fluppernet/COVIDNET
Why set up this system which is carried by the Sentinel and Public Health Network France?
The interest of this device is to manage to monitor the flu and respiratory infections such as covid or bronchiolitis in infants as soon as possible. What has been well observed is that it is the general population that can transmit the earliest possible signals. We can see that if we wait for people to come to the hospital, we will see the epidemics arrive quite late. If we wait in general medicine, we will see them a little earlier but, again, it is not as soon as possible when if it is the population itself which prevents us from the respiratory signs that they have, week After week, then we will be able to notify and know that the epidemic of flu or covid or once again bronchiolitis arrives on French territory and more specifically on the department where the flunet will be deployed.
Why the Bas-Rhin? What will happen to it?
The Bas-Rhin and the Alpes-Maritimes were chosen. There is really a surveillance project in the general population and in addition we will try to compare what we see in the general population thanks to the “flu” we call them, it is the people of the general population who will want to participate in This general population surveillance. We will compare it with what we see in other types of signals, for example, in general medicine in terms of hospitals, but also for example in the wastewater since we know that in wastewater now thanks In COVVID, we saw that we were able to capture the circulation of viruses then in these two territories, we will try to really densify, in a very precise way, the collection of data, both in general populations and in other resources, To try to compare how these signals evolve according to each other and how we could take into account all the signals to better follow epidemics in the years to come.
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You are therefore looking for 1000 volunteers. What profiles are you looking for? What should they do?
We put ourselves a rather ambitious objective we say that in these two territories therefore especially in the Bas-Rhin, we are looking for 1000 people who would like to participate in this experience, this surveillance in the general population of respiratory infections. And so these people, the idea is that they are as representative as possible of the general population so everyone is welcome. That's really the message. You have to be of age to be able to participate, but when you are registered one can declare, for your children the respiratory signs. What you will have to do is: fill out a small form that is called inclusion, that is to say that we will ask for some characteristics of people. We do not ask for the name or first name. It is totally anonymous. But we are going to ask for age, sex and what people do. Afterwards, we will ask them every week to fill out a small symptom questionnaire, that is to say to tell us once a week if they are sick or not. If they are not sick, it is just as important as they come to tell us, it takes a few seconds. And then if they are sick we will ask them to describe us the symptoms they present. Are they coughing? Do they have a runny nose? And then for how long these symptoms last. It is done directly on the internet.
What are you going to do with this data?
This information, it is already processed, that is to say every week, we look at we try to estimate the number, the proportion of sick people, we will look in the Bas-Rhin the proportion of sick people, and then We will of course also ask them if they have made a test. So we will try to estimate the number of people carrying a respiratory infection or the number of people who have the flu or the covid on the territory and we will make a return to the health authorities since Public Health France is a partner of the project . There right now, you see, there is a fairly strong flu epidemic in the Bas-Rhin but also in the rest of France and therefore to be able, now, arrive there in the coming weeks to transmit information To the general populations it is particularly interesting and then after we will transmit this data to a research team to try to compare these signals with other data sources.
Free and anonymous registration online on https://www.grippenet.fr/fr/
