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Article History

Received: 20 October 2022

Revised: 28 April 2023

Accepted: 9 May 2023

First Online: 5 June 2023

Competing interests

: M.-P.M. has received consulting fees from Sobin and AbbVie and payment for expert testimony from the Canadian Medical Protective Association. S.K.M. has received honoraria for lectures from GlaxoSmithKline, was a member of ad hoc advisory boards for Pfizer Canada and Sanofi Pasteur, and is an investigator on an investigator-led grant from Pfizer. R.A.B. has received honoraria and participated in advisory boards with SOBI, Roche, Amgen, and AbbVie. K.B. served as Past President of the Community Paediatrics Section of the Canadian Paediatric Society and has received royalties from Brush Education. K.C. is Chair of the Acute Care Committee of the Canadian Paediatric Society and is past president of the Emergency Medicine Section of the Canadian Paediatric Society. E.J.D. is Chair of the Scientific Research Committee and a director of Epilepsy Canada. She is also a member of Partners Against Mortality in Epilepsy and the advisory boards of Cardiol, Pendopharm and Stoke Therapeutics. C.F. is Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee for the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program, former Chair of the Specialty Committee in Pediatrics of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, former President of the Canadian Paediatric Society, and member of the Executive as Secretary of the Canadian Critical Care Society. She has received reimbursement for travel expenses from Canadian Paediatric Society and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. She has also received an honorarium for a presentation at a continuing education conference from the Université de Sherbrooke. S.F. is the President of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada and has received consulting fees from Toronto Metropolitan University. F.K. has received honoraria for presentations given to the Association des Pédiatres du Québec and receives CMV testing kits from Altona Diagnostics. R.M.L. has received honoraria for serving as a consultant to Sobi, Novartis, Sanofi, and Eli Lilly, as chair for data monitoring committees for Eli Lilly and Novartis, and from the Canadian Rheumatology Association. C.M.H. is the Director of Children’s Mental Health of Ontario, and the Director of medical affairs for the Canadian Paediatric Society and the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program. J.P. reports grants from MedImmune, grants and personal fees from Merck and AbbVie, and personal fees from AstraZeneca, all outside the submitted work. R.P. is a consultant for Verity Pharmaceuticals. M.S. is supported via salary awards from the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Researc and has been an investigator on projects funded by GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Moderna, Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, Seqirus, Symvivo and VBI Vaccines. All funds have been paid to his institute, and he has not received any personal payments. M.L.S. is an employee of the Public Health Agency of Canada. R.S. has received honoraria and served on an advisory board and as a consultant with Novartis, honoraria from Canadian Rheumatology Association, is a board member for Rheumatology for All, and her institution receives funding from Bristol Myers Squibb for a patient registry for which she is PO. E.H. has participated in advisory board meetings of CSL-Behring and Takeda, data safety monitoring boards of Rocket Pharmaceutical and Jasper Therapeutics, and has a patent application with the biotech Immugenia and the biotech Immune Biosolutions. All other authors report no declaration of interests.

: Research ethics approval was obtained at Health Canada-PHAC (REB #2020-002P), The Hospital for Sick Children (REB #1000070001), the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine (IRB #MP-21-2021-2901), and at individual sites as required by local policies. In Quebec, the study was conducted as a multicenter study with clinical data collected by study co-investigators, and serologies from CHUSJ done for research purposes (REB #3195) prior to the introduction of clinical testing were also included. The CPSP operates under legal authority derived from Section 4 of the Department of Health Act and Section 3 of the Public Health Agency of Canada Act. As a national surveillance program operating under these authorities (with the exception of the Province of Quebec), the CPSP does not collect any individual data elements deemed to be unique identifiers, and physicians who report cases to the CPSP are not required to obtain informed consent from patients. Participating physicians from Quebec obtain Research Ethics Board approvals from their institution in order to report clinical data to the Program. This is consistent with the Canadian Medical Association and Tri-Council Policy Statements, which allow for the collection of non-nominal and non-identifiable information for conditions under surveillance. All CPSP participants are pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists who voluntarily report cases, based on information already included in the medical chart. If any data elements requested on the questionnaire are not readily available in the chart, the physician indicates that they are unknown and do not contact the families to seek these specific details. In some cases, individual reporting physicians may provide consent to the CPSP to contact them (i.e., the reporting physician) directly to clarify cases of discrepant, missing, or unclear data. A willingness to be contacted by the CPSP is not a condition of participation in the program. Only the CPSP staff who have security clearance are aware of the name of the reporting physician; the study team does not receive this information in order to further protect patient confidentiality.

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