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. 2021 May 11:9:620598.
doi: 10.3389/fped.2021.620598. eCollection 2021.

Sars-Cov2 Not Detected in a Pediatric Population With Acute Respiratory Infection in Primary Care in Central and Southern Italy From November 2019 to Early March 2020

Caterina Rizzo  1 , Daniela Loconsole  2 , Elisabetta Pandolfi  3 , Marta Luisa Ciofi Degli Atti  1 , Jojanneke van Summeren  4 , John Paget  4 , Luisa Russo  3 , Ilaria Campagna  3 , Ileana Croci  3 , Francesco Gesualdo  3 , Carlo Concato  5 , Giulia Linardos  5 , Veronica Bartolucci  2 , Sara Ciampini  6 , Andrea Onetti Muda  7 , Massimiliano Raponi  8 , Maria Chironna  2
Affiliations

Sars-Cov2 Not Detected in a Pediatric Population With Acute Respiratory Infection in Primary Care in Central and Southern Italy From November 2019 to Early March 2020

Caterina Rizzo et al. Front Pediatr. .

Abstract

Background: In December 2019, a novel coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2 started circulating in China and this led to a major epidemic in Northern Italy between February and May 2020. Young children (aged <5 years) seem to be less affected by this coronavirus disease (COVID-19) compared to adults, although there is very little information on the circulation of this new virus among children in Italy. We retrospectively tested nasopharyngeal swabs for SARS-CoV-2 in samples collected in young children between November, 2019 and March, 2020 in the context of the RSV ComNet study. Methods: Two networks of primary care pediatricians in Lazio (Central Italy) and Puglia (Southern Italy) collected nasopharyngeal swabs from children, aged <5 years, presenting with symptoms for an acute respiratory infection (ARI). The RSV ComNet study is a multicenter study implemented to estimate the burden of RSV in young children (aged <5 years) in the community. Swabs were sent to a central reference laboratory and tested for 14 respiratory viruses through RT-PCR. All collected samples were retrospectively tested for SARS-CoV-2 using RT-PCR (Istituto Superiore di Sanità protocol). Results: A total of 293 children with ARI were identified in the two participating networks. The highest number of cases were recruited in weeks 51/2019 and 3/2020. The majority of patients (57%) came from the Lazio region. All of the 293 samples tested negative for SARS-Cov2. Rhinovirus was the most frequently detected virus (44%), followed by RSV (41%) and influenza viruses (14%). Conclusions: Our study shows that in Lazio (a region of intermediate SARS-COV-2 incidence) and Puglia (a region of low incidence), the SARS-Cov2 virus did not circulate in a sample of ARI pediatric cases consulting primary care pediatricians between November 2019 and March 2020.

Keywords: ARI; RSV; SARS-CoV2; epidemiology; pediatric cases; primary care.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of total swabs collected in Italy, week 47-2019 to 13-2020.
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