Acute respiratory infections (ARIs) remain a major public threat with high morbidity and mortality all over the world, and viruses are important pathogens that cause ARIs. This work is conducted to better understand the epidemiological characteristics of respiratory viruses circulating in southern China.
Totally 22,680 respiratory samples were collected from ARI patients from 18 hospitals in southern China during 2009-2018, and seven common respiratory viruses including Flu, RSV, PIV, hMPV, ADV, HCoV and HBoV were screened using in-house real-time PCR.
Totally 9,760 ARI cases (9760/22680, 43.03%) were detected as positive for the 7 common respiratory viruses. The most detected virus was Flu (14.15%), followed by RSV (10.33%) and PIV (5.43%). Flu-A, PIV3 and HCoV-OC43 were the predominant subtypes. Although most of the viruses were more easily detected in inpatients and males, Flu was more likely detected in outpatient and females. Flu infection was more likely to cause URTI (upper respiratory tract infection), whereas RSV infection was more likely to cause pneumonia and bronchitis. The prevalence of Flu was particularly high in 2009. The epidemic level was found notably high in 2014-2018 for RSV, in 2016-2018 for PIV, in the summer of 2018 for ADV, in the summer of 2016 and winter of 2018 for HCoV, and in the summer of 2011 and autumn of 2018 for HBoV. The co-detection rate of 7 viruses was 4.70% and RSV, PIV and Flu were the most commonly co-detected viruses.
This work demonstrates the epidemiological characteristics of 7 common respiratory viruses in ARI patients in southern China.

Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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