Community Acute Respiratory Infection (CARI) surveillance in primary care
Scientific report: 3 October 2022 to 21 May 2023

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents a summary analysis of all samples submitted in the community for respiratory surveillance for the 2022/2023 respiratory season.

Main points

The Community Acute Respiratory Infection (CARI) surveillance programme is an integrated sentinel community (primary care) surveillance programme and forms a key component of Scotland's national infectious respiratory diseases plan.

During the 2022/2023 respiratory season, a network of sentinel GP practices recruited and swabbed patients with symptoms of acute respiratory infection. Patients were tested for 10 respiratory pathogens: influenza A and B, SARS-CoV-2, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus, coronavirus (non-SARS-CoV-2), human metapneumovirus (HMPV), rhinovirus, parainfluenza and mycoplasma pneumoniae.

• A total of 11,833 samples from 139 recruited sentinel GP practices were tested as part of CARI surveillance between 3 October 2022 and 21 May 2023.
• Overall swab positivity for all respiratory pathogens was 55.9%. Swab positivity was highest in the 0–4-year age group at 77.7% followed by the 5–17 age group at 60.2%.
• Swab positivity was significantly higher in males (60.0%) compared to females (53.5%).
• Rhinovirus was the highest circulating pathogen during the surveillance period (swab positivity at 19.0%), followed by influenza A (swab positivity at 13.7%), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and seasonal coronavirus (swab positivity at 6.1% for both).

Background

Swab positivity is the percentage of submitted samples that tested positive for any respiratory pathogen or a specific respiratory pathogen.
To give users the opportunity to provide feedback on the development of these statistics, and reflecting the surveillance programme's recent establishment in 2021, the figures in this release are classified as "Experimental Statistics".