Journal article

Off-season RSV epidemics in Australia after easing of COVID-19 restrictions

JS Eden, C Sikazwe, R Xie, YM Deng, SG Sullivan, A Michie, A Levy, E Cutmore, CC Blyth, PN Britton, N Crawford, X Dong, DE Dwyer, KM Edwards, BA Horsburgh, D Foley, K Kennedy, C Minney-Smith, D Speers, RL Tulloch Show all

Nature Communications | NATURE PORTFOLIO | Published : 2022

Abstract

Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an important cause of acute respiratory infection with the most severe disease in the young and elderly. Non-pharmaceutical interventions and travel restrictions for controlling COVID-19 have impacted the circulation of most respiratory viruses including RSV globally, particularly in Australia, where during 2020 the normal winter epidemics were notably absent. However, in late 2020, unprecedented widespread RSV outbreaks occurred, beginning in spring, and extending into summer across two widely separated regions of the Australian continent, New South Wales (NSW) and Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in the east, and Western Australia. Through genom..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

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Awarded by University of Sydney


Funding Acknowledgements

The WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza is supported by the Australian Government Department of Health. Funding was provided through the ICPMR Private Practice Trust fund to J.S.E., and J.K., the National Health and Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence in Emerging Infectious Diseases (#1102962) to J.S.E., E.C.H., and D.S.W. and the Sydney Institute for Infectious Diseases at the University of Sydney to J.S.E. We would finally like to thank all the authors who have kindly shared genome data on GISAID to the EpiRSV database (Supplementary Data 3).