Tracking Pathogenic Respiratory Infections
Overall SPRINT-KIDS Project Lead: Dr. Stephen Freedman
Tracking Pathogenic Respiratory Infections SPRINT-KIDS Co-Leads: Dr. Vikram Sabhaney and Dr. Jesse Papenburg
What: Tracking severe respiratory infections in Canada’s children
Who: Children less than 18 years of age
When: Children hospitalized at a PERC hospital who have infections due to influenza, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), or mycoplasma pneumoniae
Where: Children hospitalized at 1 of 14 tertiary care pediatric hospitals that are part of the PERC network
Why: To monitor and track severe respiratory illness in children due to vaccine preventable pathogens
How: Project team members review lists of all children who are hospitalized who are tested for respiratory pathogens and have infections due to influenza, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID), RSV, or mycoplasma
Tracking the severity of respiratory infections is critical to monitoring the impacts of infection on Canada’s children to inform public health recommendations and actions. Surveillance allows for the quick detection, reporting, and response to outbreaks and aids the monitoring of global trends including prevalence, geographic spread, and evolution. Importantly, it also allows for the identification of new or evolving pathogens so they can be studied, to enable scientists to assess the risk they pose, develop tests to detect them, determine whether current medications are effective against them, and to update vaccines.
The SPRINT-KIDS Severe Respiratory Pathogen Surveillance Project aims to monitor the spread and burden of respiratory infections across the country in children. This project collects data about children less than 18 years of age who are hospitalized at 1 of 14 tertiary care pediatric hospitals that are a part of the PERC network. SPRINT-KIDS Project team members identify and collect data daily from all hospitalized children who test positive for influenza, SARS-CoV-2, RSV, and/or mycoplasma pneumonaie. Collecting and sharing this data in real-time with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) allows them to provide informed guidance to provincial health authorities, health care providers and the public regarding the risk posed by circulating pathogens. This and more data are made available to the public via the Canadian Respiratory Virus Surveillance Report.