The 28th Annual Conference of the European Society for Clinical Virology (ESCV 2026) took place in Porto, Portugal, from 16 to 19 September 2026, bringing together clinical virologists from across Europe for keynote lectures, oral presentations and poster sessions on the latest developments in the field. Dr. Katherine Loens of the Laboratory of Medical Microbiology presented a poster on behalf of the ECRAID-Prime Consortium: Etiology of respiratory infections in non-hospitalised patients (poster P103).

The poster presents baseline etiological data from ECRAID-Prime (European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases – Primary care adaptive platform trial for pandemics and epidemics), a platform-randomised trial comparing nasal sprays with usual care in primary care patients with respiratory tract infections. The trial is running across eight countries — Belgium, France, Germany, Georgia, Ireland, Poland, the United Kingdom and Spain.

Between October 2024 and March 2026, 795 patients aged 18 to 93 presenting to primary care with respiratory symptoms of seven days or less were enrolled, with nose and throat swabs collected at baseline and at days 4, 7 and 14. Samples were analysed for 21 respiratory viruses and 5 atypical bacteria.

A respiratory virus was detected in roughly two out of three patients (61.6%), with human rhinovirus, influenza A/B and seasonal coronaviruses the most frequently identified pathogens. Viral co-infections, most often influenza combined with rhinovirus, were found in 5.5% of positive samples.