With mask-wearing and social distancing on the decline and the cold and flu season upon us, researchers have developed a viral panel that has enabled the simultaneous testing for SARS-CoV-2 along with other common respiratory viruses, that tells whether other viruses also are at play in patients hard hit by COVID.
The findings of the study were published in the journal ‘Viruses’.
“This new genetic epidemiology tool that provides detailed genetic information about the viruses present when packaged with a molecular immunology model called Nextstrain also enables researchers to assess the novel viral variants that are circulating in a state or nation and patterns for their spread with the goal of helping predict and mitigate future outbreaks,” said Dr Ravindra Kolhe, director of the Georgia Esoteric and Molecular Laboratory at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
While the cold and flu season was essentially a wash last year because of COVID precautions like mask-wearing — in fact, the coinfection rate in the group they studied was under 1 per cent — he and others are concerned the cold and flu season now upon us will be very different even with vaccination initiatives for both COVID and the flu.
“We are concerned that because most of us are no longer wearing masks or social distancing and have mostly resumed our normal schedules that one consequence will be more coinfections. We feel this is a good tool to have ready when the flu and cold season hit,” Kolhe said.
Working with the San Diego-based biotech firm Illumina, the researchers developed a 41-virus panel that includes four common human coronaviruses that have been causing colds in people for years as well as SARS-CoV-2, and other players like RSV, respiratory syncytial virus, which also causes a typically mild cold, and more than a dozen influenza viruses.
They looked at 483 patient samples, mostly taken by nasopharyngeal swab, as well as a dozen saliva samples, that had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 from across the state of Georgia between June 2020 and the end of December.
Standard SARS-CoV-2 testing uses polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, which can tell you if the virus is present, but the technique they are using for the panel actually sequences the viral genome enabling detection of variants, like the potential more deadly Delta variant, that has made headlines in recent months.
The interactive visualisation model they use to watch viral spread playout can also track the movement of variants, like Delta, that do have direct clinical consequences like degree of contagiousness and resulting sickness.
There is some evidence that monoclonal antibodies and corticosteroids may also be effective for some flu but many questions remain, like what happens when the monoclonal antibodies are made specifically for the COVID virus. There is some evidence that vaccines for flu and COVID don’t appear to have an overlap in protection.