Epidemiological trends of respiratory tract pathogens detected via mPCR in Australian adult patients before COVID-19

Respiratory tract infections (RTIs) are a major global health burden due to their high morbidity and mortality. This retrospective study described the epidemiology of respiratory pathogens in adults over a 5-year period at an Australian tertiary healthcare network. All multiplex reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction respiratory samples taken between the 1st of November 2014 and the 31st of October 2019 were included in this study. Overall prevalence and variations according to seasons, age groups and sex were analysed, as well as factors associated with prolonged hospital and intensive care length of stay. There were 12,453 pathogens detected amongst the 12,185 positive samples, with coinfection rates of 3.7