As of Thursday, swine flu had spread to 11 states, but so far there’s been only one U.S. death. Mexico, however, is a different story, and at the urging of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Google Inc. has released a Mexico-optimized version of its Flu Trends tracking service.
The idea is to help health officials track the disease in that country by correlating spikes in swine flu keyword searches with geography, in order to pinpoint flu incidences and likely outbreaks. While useful in providing only a limited amount of advance warning, it could help alert officials to new hotspots for the disease.
The Flu Trends service was first launched in the United States last November, and historical surveillance data here bears out the accuracy of the approach, Google said. It also said that the increase in flu-related searches in Mexico around April 20 points to evidence that the service is accurately tracking the spread of swine flu.
