University of Calgary researchers are leading a national surveillance system, tracking respiratory virus trends among Canadian children who seek care in hospitals, from coast to coast.

The program, known as SPRINT-Kids, involves 15 pediatric hospitals in eight provinces, and is designed to track a range of infectious diseases, including RSV, influenza and COVID-19.

It is also monitoring adverse reactions to immunizations and vaccine effectiveness.

The data, collected for the Public Health Agency of Canada, is reported weekly, providing a real-time perspective on which infections are active, who is most at risk as well as transmission patterns and hot spots, according to the University of Calgary.

"It can serve as a sentinel warning system to identify when we are starting to see increases across the country and where we are seeing it," said Dr. Stephen Freedman, a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the Cumming School of Medicine.

The University of Calgary team was contracted by the federal government to take over the monitoring project after an earlier pediatric surveillance contract expired.

According to Freedman, who leads the team, they've expanded the surveillance system beyond hospital admissions to include children seen in emergency rooms.

"Over 90 per cent of children who seek emergency department care are actually discharged to home. So [we're] really trying to understand the broader picture that affects the broader community," he said.

The program gathers a range of information, including symptoms, severity of illness, vaccination status, treatment, tests and outcomes.

"Often these infections … start off on the East Coast and then slowly make their way out to the West Coast," he said.

"So that can actually play a role in helping with staffing, planning, addressing the need for surge and capacity. And that is really kind of an important thing for the health-care system."

Beyond informing public policy and planning at a hospital level, he said, this kind of monitoring helps parents by providing information on which viruses are circulating, how common they are and whether they're likely to show up in their community.

"That also really reinforces the potential impact and importance of vaccination," he said.

And, according to Freedman, the system can track emerging threats such as H5N1 avian influenza.

"If that were to start to emerge, we would be primed and ready to track it, understand it, collect data on its severity very quickly to better understand it, see what treatments are being given and how the children are doing as well."

The team is also looking at mycoplasma pneumoniae — known as walking pneumonia — which sparked concern as case numbers surged late last year.

In addition, the system monitors adverse immunization reactions (both mild and severe), such as myocarditis, and how often that might be happening. This also includes children seen in emergency rooms.

And it builds on the earlier system by collecting data that will help assess how well vaccines are working, according to Freedman.

The U of C team was contracted to lead the project in November of 2023 and its scope expanded in November of 2024, he said.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said the university was selected after a previous contract for pediatric hospital surveillance expired and the data is a key component of its overarching surveillance system.

"These data include information on demographics, clinical characteristics, risk factors and interventions related to severe respiratory illness, which enables a better understanding of key factors influencing observed trends and supports the development of public health recommendations to mitigate the impact of severe illness in children," a spokesperson said in an email.

Freedman expects the team's data will be shared on the federal government's weekly respiratory virus surveillance report within the next month or two.

And there are plans to publish information about circulating pathogens — along with detailed age breakdowns — on the University of Calgary's SPRINT-Kids website.