Not all respiratory infections were SARS-CoV-2 during the pandemic, analysis in a clinic on the Colombian Caribbean coast

Introduction: Acute Respiratory Infections (ARIs) are considered one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Children under five and older adults are most likely to die from this cause.Objective: To describe the behavior of infection by respirator y viruses other than SARS-CoV-2 during the pandemic in a clinic in the Colombian Caribbean.Methods: This descriptive and retrospective study evaluates the characteristics, associated comorbidities, and requirements of hospitalization or Intensive Care Unit in patients diagnosed with respirator y viral infections treated at IMAT Oncomedica clinic from July 2020 to August 2022.Results: This study evaluated 351 patients with respiratory symptoms, observing an exponential increase in cases of respiratory infection as of April 2022, with a high proportion of syncytial virus infections mainly in children under 18 year s of age (22.1%) and Human Rhinovirus/Enterovirus in patients with solid tumor s and hematological disorder s (48.8%), the latter was associated with a higher rate of hospitalization and ICU requirement in the individuals evaluated.Conclusions: Respirator y viruses other than SARS-CoV-2, such as Rhino/Enterovirus, RSV, and adenovirus, are circulating in the population at a clinic on the Colombian Caribbean coast. The findings should motivate public health authorities to conduct more thorough surveillance in the rest of the state.& COPY; 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/li-censes/by-nc-nd/4.0/).