Comparison of statistical approaches to predicting norovirus laboratory reports before and during COVID-19: insights to inform public health surveillance.

Social distancing interrupted transmission patterns of contact-driven infectious agents such as norovirus during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since routine surveillance of norovirus was additionally disrupted during the pandemic, traditional naïve forecasts that rely only on past public health surveillance data may not reliably represent norovirus activity. This study investigates the use of statistical modelling to predict the number of norovirus laboratory reports in England 4-weeks ahead of time before and during Covid-19 pandemic thus providing insights to inform existing practices in norovirus surveillance in England.