Reducing Respiratory Virus Transmission in Bangladeshi Classrooms

Study personnel will visit each school twice weekly. They will identify any students within the study classrooms who were absent or who have symptoms consistent with the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of influenza like illness. For children who were absent or who have symptoms, study personnel will visit the child's home, and if the student's parent provides informed consent, collect more detailed information on signs and symptoms, and a throat swab from the child. The throat swab will be placed on viral transport media, placed on ice and transported to the One Health Laboratory at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). One aliquot from the specimen will be analyzed for Influenza A, Influenza B, and SARS-CoV-2. In the laboratory, nucleic acid in the throat swab specimen will be extracted and one-step real-time (RT)-PCR conducted to assess the presence of RNA from Influenza A, Influenza B or SARS-CoV-2.