Using research to prepare for outbreaks of severe acute respiratory infection

Eligible patients were those admitted to the relevant hospital unit of interest if they met the following inclusion criteria: suspected or proven acute respiratory infection with onset within the past 14 days, with one or more of the following: fever, cough, dyspnoea or tachypnoea. There were no exclusion criteria. Consent was obtained where deemed appropriate per local ethics boards, and waived at other institutions due to the routine and anonymised nature of the data collected. 9 data collected Clinical data were collected prospectively at participating centres, and consisted of presenting signs and symptoms, severity of illness, comorbidities, interventions received during hospitalisation and clinical outcomes at time of discharge. Pathogen testing was according to routine diagnostic practices at each participating centre. Organ dysfunction for adults was determined through calculating the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores. 10 For children, an adapted organ dysfunction score was used to capture rates of organ dysfunction. 11 Scores were calculated from worst reported component data obtained on the first day of admission. Outcomes were not censored for the duration of stay. Data collection was facilitated through open-access clinical protocols, case report forms and web-based data entry of fully anonymised data through secure servers.