Since the peaks of the epidemic happen in winter, near the transition between calendar years, we define the reference period for the annual incidence from August 1st of year /N/ to August 1st of year /N+1/. We label this period as year /N+1/ because the peak is always located in year /N+1/. The very low incidence in summer ensures that the arbitrariness of the choice of reference period has no impact on our conclusions.
This R function computes the annual incidence as defined above: