ABSTRACT
Background: Acute respiratory illnesses (ARI) are among the major public health problems both in developed and developing countries. Studies describing about the types and magnitude of viral etiologies responsible for acute respiratory infections in Ethiopia are limited. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted on samples collected from the influenza surveillance sites in Ethiopia using Multiplex PCR. Throat/throat and nasopharyngeal swab samples were collected from the sentinel sites between January 2015 to December 2016. For the current study, samples were selected by systematic random sampling technique for detection of Parainfluenza viruses1-4 (PIV1-4), Human coronaviruses (HCoV), Human metapneumoviruses A/B (HMPV A/B); Rhinovirus (RV); Respiratory syncytial viruses A/B (RSV A/B); Human adenovirus (HAdV), Enterovirus (EV), Human parechovirus (HPeV),Human bocavirus (HBoV) and Influenza virus C (INF C). Descriptive statistics was done using SPSS version 20. Result: A total of 422 samples constituting 202 (47.9%) from male patients were tested. Among all samples 55.5% (n= 234/422) were positive for at least one respiratory virus. Respiratory viruses were co-detected in 18.2% (n=77) of the samples and 79.2% (n=61/77) were from SARI cases (p=0.007). The most frequently detected respiratory viruses were RV (18.7%), RSV A/B, (12.8%), HAdV (11.4%) and PIV1-4 (7.3%). Conclusion: The study identified range of respiratory viruses circulation among samples from ILI and SARI cases mainly among under-five children. Large scale study is recommended to better understand the seasonal variation, spectrum of illness and severity of ARI due to the different respiratory viruses.