Respiratory syncytial virus-induced disease in healthy infants: we need to offload this burden.

Abstract

In the slipstream of the extraordinary, worldwide natural experiment reducing close human contact to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2, a drastically but temporarily diminished transmission of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in children occurred in the winter of 2020–21.1 This glimpse of a world without RSV gained momentum for the urgent need for preventive strategies for this prototypical paediatric pathogen, which causes a spectrum of mild upper-respiratory to severe lower-respiratory tract disease in young children.