Italy: 'Syncytial virus present in 55% of the sample of children under the age of two'

By Cristiano Antonino On Jan 16, 2023

In the last week in children under the age of two there is a prevalence of respiratory syncytial virus, while in the elderly who have respiratory symptoms the influenza virus prevails, which is generally declining in all age groups

This is stated in an in-depth study on data from the InfluNet/RespiVirNet collection system just published on the Influnet portal.

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Italy, Health Surveillance Data on Respiratory Syncytial Virus

The data are collected by the Influnet surveillance system network, whose laboratories test samples of patients with influenza-like syndromes (Ili) characterising them for the different viruses circulating during this period.

The analysis showed, for example, that in under-two-year-olds 54.9% of the samples were positive for Rsv, 30.4% for influenza and 2.6% for Sars-CoV-2.

Very different is the proportion already between 2 and 4 years, where more than half of the samples are positive for influenza, while the ‘weight of Rsv drops.

The report will be updated every week and published together with the epidemiological and virological Influnet reports on the dedicated portal.

It should be noted that the current InfluNet/RespiVirNet data collection system was originally designed to obtain information on influenza viruses circulating in a given epidemic season.

The detection of other respiratory viruses in the samples taken, which started in November 2022, is currently not carried out uniformly in all network member laboratories.

There may therefore be small distortions in the calculation of positive samples and proportions for other respiratory viruses.

Various activities concerning the data collection and analysis system are ongoing in order to continuously improve their representativeness.

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