WHO Meeting of Final Review of the RSV Surveillance Pilot Based on the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, 23 - 25 October 2018.

Overview

The meeting summarized the outcomes and the lessons learnt from the pilot phase. Key takeaway messages included the feasibility of leveraging the influenza surveillance platform for RSV surveillance without any significant adverse impact; the application of the extended SARI case definition for RSV surveillance; the focus on young children with the highest RSV disease burden; the need to ascertain seasonality patterns and measure simple RSV disease burden estimates such as proportions of hospitalizations due to RSV that would inform policy decisions on vaccine investment and introduction. Going forward, the meeting concluded to revise the WHO RSV Surveillance strategy for the next phase of surveillance to further focus on children less than 2 years with the highest burden; adopt a tiered approach to disease burden estimation with emphasis on basic estimates of hospital burden of RSV; ascertain RSV circulation by virus type A or B; develop laboratory protocols for RSV typing and schema for sequencing; and expand to countries that are geographically more representative as well as are eligible to receive investment from the Gavi Alliance for RSV vaccine introduction when it becomes available.