Abstract for: Estimates of the Reproduction Number for Seasonal Influenza Infectious Disease in the European Region from 2012 to 2016

In the 21st century, the world is facing a wide range of increasingly dynamic problems related to infectious diseases. Seasonal influenza is a contagious viral infection, which affects the human respiratory system. The basic reproduction number R0 represents the transmissibility of infectious disease and contributes to the selection of protective measures. Influenza vaccine policy plays a critical role to control the influenza outbreak. This paper is concerned to estimate the seasonal influenza infectious disease reproduction number R0 in the European region. We utilized the system dynamics (SD) SEIR model and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) sampling algorithm, which is freely available Stan software. To this end, we established a normalised model with prior knowledge and likelihood function in an efficient way for various incidence data sets of influenza-like illness (ILI) from 2012 to 2016. Our study illustrates how seasonal influenza data from European countries can be integrated into a Bayesian framework to assess the disease reproduction parameter. This study detects any changes that occurred over some time in the reproduction number R0 to reflect the success of the seasonal vaccination policy as a control measure. The analysis provides reliable insight into an epidemic and policy development.