Identifying geographic areas with high disease rates: when do confidence intervals for rates and a disease cluster detection method agree?

Table 1 Population, cases, expected cases (_i:0), R3 value (c_i+- z(α/2), and approximate 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for each RHA.

i	c _i+	n _i+	_i:0	R3 value	95% CI
1	53	42,645	44.922	38.740	(0.0009,0.0016)
2	31	24,583	25.896	20.094	(0.0008,0.0017)
3	12	19,381	20.416	5.212	(0.0003,0.0010)
4	221	232,460	244.873	191.876	(0.0008,0.0011)
5	14	15,606	16.440	6.670	(0.0004,0.0014)
6	82	54,819	57.746	64.265	(0.0012,0.0018)*
7	24	28,694	30.226	14.402	(0.0005,0.0012)
8	25	26,740	28.168	15.205	(0.0006,0.0013)
9	22	11,436	12.047	12.816	(0.0011,0.0027)*
10	227	206,226	217.238	197.486	(0.0010,0.0012)
11	17	24,806	26.131	8.921	(0.0004,0.0010)
12	34	33,357	35.138	22.577	(0.0007,0.0014)
13	19	27,385	28.847	10.460	(0.0004,0.0010)
14	9	6,195	6.526	3.124	(0.0005,0.0024)
15	17	9,501	10.008	8.926	(0.0009,0.0026)
16	17	12,599	13.272	8.924	(0.0007,0.0020)
17	3	8,646	9.108	-0.394	(0.0000,0.0007)
Total	827	785,079

The overall provincial rate is 105.3 cases per 100,000 population. An asterisk (*) denotes RHAs with rates higher than the provincial rates at the 5% level, unadjusted for multiple testing.

ISSN: 1476-072X