Dear Colleagues,

Despite tremendous efforts in the fight against influenza and SARS-CoV-2 by development and wide application of contemporary vaccines and antivirals, many problems remain due to the high variability of pathogens, on the one hand, and the short duration of protective population immunity, on the other. The high rate of mutations in the surface glycoproteins of viruses allows new drift variants escaping from the established immunity and cause annual seasonal epidemics. Besides, global surveillance shows that periodically in different countries of the world, new, highly transmissible and pathogenic variants of influenza and SARS viruses emerge, causing high morbidity and mortality of population and imposing a significant disease burden worldwide, which continues to keep existing healthcare systems under pressure. One of the important element of severe pandemic counteraction is the surveillance for the existing highly pathogenic viruses and for emergence of new variants in human-animal interface. In addition to traditional epidemiology, we observe the growing interest to molecular epidemiology, which enables the determination of the origin of emergent strains and ways of its further spread at the local, country and global level.

In this regard, the purpose of this issue is to provide an up-to-date view in the field of:

• The development and clinical trials of new vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and antivirals to influenza, RSV and SARS-CoV-2;
• The results of surveillance for a wide range of respiratory viruses and their interaction on the cellular and population level;
• Data on evaluation of the effectiveness of vaccines in the context of ongoing pathogen drift;
• New approaches and advances in the development of highly sensitive rapid diagnostic tests for the early detection of pathogens;
• Decoding of new viruses’ genetic structure;
• Assessing the transmissibility and pathogenicity of agents and, ultimately, preliminary predicting the severity of upcoming epidemic events.

Prof. Dr. Anna A. Sominina
Guest Editor

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• influenza virus
• SARS-CoV-2
• RSV, adenovirus, parainfluenza virus, rhinovirus, metapneumovirus
• epidemiology
• vaccine effectiveness
• antivirals
• rapid diagnosis
• PCR—detection
• surveillance
• molecular epidemiology
• next-generation sequencing
• virus evolution