Epidemiology of Seasonal Coronaviruses: Establishing the Context for the Emergence of Coronavirus Disease 2019
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Abstract
Public health preparedness for coronavirus (CoV) disease 2019 (COVID-19) is challenging in the absence of setting-specific epidemiological data. Here we describe the epidemiology of seasonal CoVs (sCoVs) and other cocirculating viruses in the West of Scotland, United Kingdom. We analyzed routine diagnostic data for >70 000 episodes of respiratory illness tested molecularly for multiple respiratory viruses between 2005 and 2017. Statistical associations with patient age and sex differed between CoV-229E, CoV-OC43, and CoV-NL63. Furthermore, the timing and magnitude of sCoV outbreaks did not occur concurrently, and coinfections were not reported. With respect to other cocirculating respiratory viruses, we found evidence of positive, rather than negative, interactions with sCoVs. These findings highlight the importance of considering cocirculating viruses in the differential diagnosis of COVID-19. Further work is needed to establish the occurrence/degree of cross-protective immunity conferred across sCoVs and with COVID-19, as well as the role of viral coinfection in COVID-19 disease severity.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.18.20037101: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:More work is needed to establish whether low coinfection frequency among sCoVs supports an immune-mediated competition for hosts, or whether this reflects a limitation of diagnostic data which only captures a snapshot of an …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.18.20037101: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:More work is needed to establish whether low coinfection frequency among sCoVs supports an immune-mediated competition for hosts, or whether this reflects a limitation of diagnostic data which only captures a snapshot of an individual’s infection. To our knowledge, evidence of immunological cross-protection between human coronaviruses is lacking, and reports of antigenic cross-reactivity are inconsistent. The potential for serological cross-reactivity between SARS-CoV and sCoVs has been shown by some [28, 29] but not others [30]. And although confinement of cross-reactivity at the coronavirus genus level is possible, consistent with the greater genetic relatedness of these viruses [31, 32], more general cross-reactivity between CoV-OC43 and CoV-229E has also been found [33]. Population serological surveys will be critical for establishing the true burden and age distribution of sCoV infections in the community and the potential for cross-protective immunity. It should be borne in mind that the implications of population levels of cross-immunity are likely to vary according to the local epidemiological context. We note the predominance of CoV-OC43 detections previously observed in a comparatively urban but different Scottish patient population [14], a pattern more generally consistent at the Scottish national level [27]. Other trends observed within our study population are consistent with the Scottish national level, such as peak levels of CoV-229E detection in 2010 coincidin...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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