About the Authors

Shelly Bolotin

Affiliation Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom

Richard Pebody

richard.pebody@hpa.org.uk

Affiliation Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom

Peter J. White

Affiliations Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom, MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling, Imperial College School of Public Health, London, United Kingdom

James McMenamin

Affiliation Health Protection Scotland, NHS National Services, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Luke Perera

Affiliation Department of Health, London, United Kingdom

Jonathan S. Nguyen-Van-Tam

Affiliations Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom, University of Nottingham, City Hospital, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Thomas Barlow

Affiliation Department of Health, London, United Kingdom

John M. Watson

Affiliation Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom

for the UK Severe Influenza Surveillance System (USISS) Steering Group

Affiliations Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom, MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling, Imperial College School of Public Health, London, United Kingdom, Health Protection Scotland, NHS National Services, Glasgow, United Kingdom, Department of Health, London, United Kingdom, University of Nottingham, City Hospital, Nottingham, United Kingdom, Department of Health, London, United Kingdom, Public Health Wales, Cardiff, United Kingdom, Public Health Agency, Belfast, United Kingdom, Royal College of Physicians, London, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

JSN-V-T has received funding to attend influenza related meetings, lecture and consultancy fees (ceasing in September 2010), and research funding from several influenza antiviral drug and vaccine manufacturers, and is a former employee of SmithKline Beecham plc. (now GlaxoSmithKline), Roche Products Ltd, and Aventis-Pasteur MSD (now Sanofi-Pasteur MSD). PJW has received funds from Kendle Healthcare for an expert opinion on influenza and has received funding from Elsevier in 2010 to attend an influenza-related meeting. No other relationships, activities, or nonfinancial competing interests exist that could appear to have influenced the submitted work. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: RP JMW SB PJW JM LP JSN-V-T TB. Performed the experiments: SB. Analyzed the data: SB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SB RP JSN-V-T PJW. Wrote the paper: SB RP JMW PJW JM LP JSN-V-T TB.