How is a respiratory infection changing over time?

Challenge

Reported cases of respiratory infections represent a subset of total infections because some infected people had mild or no symptoms or did not seek medical care or get tested. Furthermore, the availability of viral testing was limited.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) conducted a multistate assessment of a respiratory virus seroprevalence in blood donor samples from 60+ metropolitan regions in the U.S. for the presence of respiratory virus antibodies.

Solution

Westat provided study coordination, data collection and management, and analytical services.

Using U.S. census data, we weighted the results to extrapolate seroprevalence data from blood donor samples to the general community in the geographic regions in which the blood donors lived.

Results

This seroprevalence study allows CDC to:

• Assess increasing penetrance of the respiratory infection into distinct U.S. communities
• Determine overall seroprevalence at various points in time