Cohort profile: the potentially preventable burden of community-acquired pneumonia in South African adults in the era of widespread PCV13 immunisation and antiretroviral therapy roll-out, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic - the multicentre, multimethod PotPrev Study.

Purpose: In the setting of an established childhood pneumococcal vaccination programme with immediate initiation and treatment of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV (PLWH), the risk of adult pneumococcal community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is not recently described. We aimed to investigate CAP incidence, recurrence, mortality, risk factors and microbiology before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Participants: Adults aged ≥18 years were enrolled in three South African provinces from March 2019 to October 2021, with a brief halt during the initial COVID-19 lockdown.

A potential platform for future vaccine trials identifies high incidence of symptomatic and asymptomatic influenza infection among children aged 6-23 months in South Africa.

Background: Approaches for determining whether influenza vaccination prevents infection, attenuates illness, or both, are important for developing improved vaccines. We estimated influenza infection incidence, and evaluated symptom ascertainment methodologies in children to inform future vaccine trial design.

Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study among children aged 6-23 months from May-October 2022.