Amit Huppert, Oren Barnea, Guy Katriel, Rami Yaari, Uri Roll, Lewi Stone

Seasonal influenza outbreaks are a serious burden for public health worldwide and cause morbidity to millions of people each year. In the temperate zone influenza is predominantly seasonal, with epidemics occurring every winter, but the severity of the outbreaks vary substantially between years. In this study we used a highly detailed database, which gave us both temporal and spatial information of influenza dynamics in Israel in the years 1998-2009. We use a discrete-time stochastic epidemic SIR model to find estimates and credible confidence intervals of key epidemiological parameters.