Peter English, Personal comments - not those of my employer
5 August 2010
The conclusion starts "In conclusion, our results suggest that entry screening could delay local transmission for an additional 1-2 weeks" (and in the abstract "Entry screening may lead to short-term delays in local transmission of a novel strain of influenza virus"). Yet the results section states that the 95% confidence interval includes zero, and the discussion starts "Our results suggest that entry screening did not lead to substantial delays in local H1N1 transmission".
I take home the message: there is no evidence that entry screening delays the transmission of H1N1 in a country. This could be because it doesn't; or it could be because studies designed to look for such evidence have been under-powered to detect it.
So there's no evidence of benefit, then?
5 August 2010
The conclusion starts "In conclusion, our results suggest that entry screening could delay local transmission for an additional 1-2 weeks" (and in the abstract "Entry screening may lead to short-term delays in local transmission of a novel strain of influenza virus"). Yet the results section states that the 95% confidence interval includes zero, and the discussion starts "Our results suggest that entry screening did not lead to substantial delays in local H1N1 transmission".
I take home the message: there is no evidence that entry screening delays the transmission of H1N1 in a country. This could be because it doesn't; or it could be because studies designed to look for such evidence have been under-powered to detect it.
Competing interests
None