The syndromic measure uses electronic records from the participating healthcare centers, which capture all the cases in which a doctor told somebody they have covid. That's going to depend on whether the doctor decides to test them. From anecdotal evidence, they don't test anybody.

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Recently I have two friends go to the doctor because they were sick with respiratory symptoms, in both cases the doctor just said a version of "it's a virus, go home, it will be over in a week or two". I told them both to test for covid, it turned out one was covid, one was VRS.

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That's why I don't like the syndromic measures, and instead I use the systemic measures: the positivity rate, and the proxy. These come from a much smaller number of patients, for which a selected few doctors have to follow a much better protocol. I have a friend who is a doctor and is part of that.

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The systemic measures (positivity and proxy) come from a MUCH smaller sample, but it's an actual random sample with good protocols. In the last week there were a total of 664 patients tested, and from those 172 tested positive covid, 82 for flu, none for VRS.

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Those participating doctors have to test for at least flu, covid and VRS, the patients (only the first ones each day) that show up with at least two symptoms from a very long list that includes coughing, runny nose and fever, but also gastrointestinal issues, dizzyness, etc.

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