Spotlight influenza: Extending influenza surveillance to detect non-influenza respiratory viruses of public health relevance: analysis of surveillance data, Belgium, 2015 to 2019

Background: Seasonal influenza-like illness (ILI) affects millions of people yearly. Severe acute respira-tory infections (SARI), mainly influenza, are a lead-ing cause of hospitalisation and mortality. Increasing evidence indicates that non-influenza respiratory viruses (NIRV) also contribute to the burden of SARI. In Belgium, SARI surveillance by a network of sentinel hospitals has been ongoing since 2011. Aim: We report the results of using in-house multiplex qPCR for the detection of a flexible panel of viruses in respiratory ILI and SARI samples and the estimated incidence rates of SARI a... Mehr ...