Researchers at the University of Calgary lead a national surveillance system, tracing the trends of the respiratory virus among Canadian children seeking attention in hospitals, from coast to coast.
The program, known as Sprint-Kids, involves 15 pediatric hospitals in eight provinces, and is designed to trace a variety of infectious diseases, including RSV, influenza and COVID-19.
It is also monitoring adverse reactions to immunizations and vaccine effectiveness.
The data, compiled for the Canada Public Health Agency, are reported weekly, providing a real -time perspective on which the infections are active, which are more at risk, as well as transmission patterns and hot points, according to the University of Calgary.
“It can serve as a sentinel warning system to identify when we are beginning to see increases throughout the country and where we are seeing it,” said Dr. Stephen Freedman, professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Cumming.
The federal team hired the University of Calgary team to take care of the monitoring project after an anterior pediatric surveillance contract expired.
According to Freedman, who leads the team, have expanded the surveillance system beyond hospital income to include children seen in emergency rooms.
“More than 90 percent of children seeking attention from the emergency department are actually discharged home. [we’re] Really trying to understand the broader image that affects the broader community, “he said.
The program brings together a variety of information, including symptoms, the severity of the disease, vaccination, treatment, tests and results.
“Often these infections … they start on the east coast and then slowly leave the west coast,” he said.
“Therefore, that can really play a role in helping with staff, planning, addressing the need for increase and capacity. And that is really important for the medical care system.”
Beyond informing public policies and planning at the hospital level, he said, this type of monitoring helps parents provide information about which viruses are circulating, how common they are and if it is likely to appear in their community.
“That also really reinforces the potential impact and importance of vaccination,” he said.
And, according to Freedman, the system can track emerging threats such as Aviar H5N1 influenza.
“If that began to emerge, we would be prepared and ready to track it, understand it, collect data about your severity very quickly to understand it better, see what treatments are being given and how children are also doing.”
The team is also analyzing Mycoplasma Pneumoniae, known as walking pneumonia, which caused concern as the number of cases arose at the end of last year.
In addition, the system monitors adverse immunization reactions (both slight and severe), such as myocarditis, and how often that could be happening. This also includes children seen in emergency rooms.
And it is based on the previous system collecting data that will help evaluate how well vaccines are working, according to Freedman.
The U team was hired to lead the project in November 2023 and its scope expanded in November 2024, he said.
The Canada Public Health Agency said the university was selected after a previous contract for the surveillance of the Pediatric Hospital Expired and the data is a key component of its general surveillance system.
“These data include information about demography, clinical characteristics, risk factors and interventions related to serious respiratory diseases, allowing a better understanding of the key factors that influence the trends observed and support the development of public health recommendations to mitigate the impact of severe disease on children,” said a spokesman in an email.
Freedman expects the data of the team to be shared on those of the federal government Weekly surveillance of the respiratory virus Report within next month or two.
And there are plans to publish information about circulating pathogens, along with the detailed breakdown of age, on the Sprint-Kids website of the University of Calgary.
