Differences in epidemic spread patterns of norovirus and influenza seasons of Germany: an application of optical flow analysis in epidemiology

This analysis presents data from a new perspective offering key insights into the spread patterns of norovirus and influenza epidemic events. We utilize optic flow analysis to gain an informed overview of a wealth of statistical epidemiological data and identify trends in movement of influenza waves throughout Germany on the NUTS 3 level (413 locations) which maps municipalities on European level. We show that Influenza and norovirus seasonal outbreak events have a highly distinct pattern. We investigate the quantitative statistical properties of the epidemic patterns and find a shifted distribution in the time between influenza and norovirus seasonal peaks of reported infections over one decade. These findings align with key biological features of both pathogens as shown in the course of this analysis.