Is COVID-19 Associated With an Increased Risk of Subsequent Upper Respiratory Tract Infections in Adults? A Prospective Cohort Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background In Autumn 2022, a surge in upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) was observed worldwide. Individuals anecdotally reported increased URTIs in the months following their coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The objective was to assess if COVID-19 is associated with a higher incidence of URTI in adults in the following months. Methods “RECOVER” is a prospective cohort of health care workers (HCWs) from Montreal, Canada. HCWs completed biweekly surveys to report incident COVID-like symptoms. We included HCWs actively followed up for ≥90 days, between December 1, 2021, and December 31, 2022. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections were confirmed via reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction/antigenic testing. Non-COVID-19 URTI cases were defined as new onset of fever/sensation of fever, rhinitis, nasal congestion, sore throat/pharyngitis, sneezing, coughing, wheezing, difficulty breathing, increased respiratory secretions, or change in characteristics of chronic secretions, excluding symptoms within 48 hours of vaccination. Time-dependent Cox regression was used to assess the association between recent COVID-19 and URTI, adjusting for sex, age, workplace, household children <5 years, and asthma. Results Among 320 HCWs (82.5% females; mean age, 42.4 years) followed for a median of 342 days, 152 (47.5%) participants tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. No significant difference in the incidence of URTI was observed following COVID-19 (hazard ratio, 1.03; 95% CI, 0.74–1.43; P = .87). However, having at least 1 child <5 years was associated with a 74% (95% CI, 20%–153%; P = .003) increase in the risk for URTI. Findings remained similar in sensitivity analysis. Conclusions There was no association between COVID-19 and subsequent URTI. Other epidemiological, individual, and social factors could explain the increase in the incidence of URTI.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".