More than a Cold: Defining and Quantifying the Population Attributable Fraction for Infectious and Non-infectious Diseases for Common Respiratory Viral Infections

The term "attributable risk" is important in the field of public health and epidemiology. It shows how much of a disease can be prevented if a certain cause of the disease is stopped or reduced. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how important it is to study attributable risk because the virus has been linked to a rise in different types of diseases, like heart and nerve problems, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases. The virus that causes COVID-19 might also make infections like bacterial and fungal infections more severe. Researchers have also been looking at the impact of other respiratory viruses, like the flu and RSV, on people's health. It would be best to study the impact of viruses on people's health by testing individuals and following up to see if they get other illnesses more commonly after getting a viral infection, but this can be difficult because of cost and logistical reasons, and also because not everyone gets tested for viruses. So researchers have come up with ways to study these links that still work when testing is limited, or when most testing is done in people at higher risk of medical problems. This way, they can still get a good idea of how viruses affect people's health. We want to study the impact of 3 common viruses (COVID-19, the flu, and RSV), both on other infectious diseases, and on non-infectious diseases. Central Ontario is an ideal place to do these studies, because it has a large population in a small area, and there are lots of good data available. If our project is successful, it could be used to help make better decisions about public health programs for preventing infection by common viruses.