Tracking Viral Respiratory Infections
Overall SPRINT-KIDS Project Lead: Dr. Stephen Freedman
Tracking Viral Respiratory Infections SPRINT-KIDS Co-Leads: Dr. Vikram Sabhaney and Dr. Quynh Doan
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)
Where: Children hospitalized at 1 of 15 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 viruses.
How: Project team members review lists of all children who are hospitalized who are tested for respiratory viruses and have infections due to influenza, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) or RSV.
Tracking the severity of viral 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 viruses 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 Virus Surveillance Project aims to monitor the spread and burden of respiratory infections across the country in children. Collecting and sharing this data in real-time with the Public Health Agency of Canada allows them to provide informed guidance to provincial health authorities, health care providers and the public regarding the risk posed by circulating viruses. The data is collected by project team members who review daily lists of patients who are hospitalized and test positive for influenza, SARS-CoV-2 and/or RSV. This project includes data for children less than 18 years of age who are hospitalized at 1 of 15 tertiary care pediatric hospitals that are a part of the PERC network.