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In the last months of 2019, an outbreak of fatal respiratory disease started in Wuhan, China, and quickly spread to other parts of the world. It was named COVID‐19, and to date, thousands of cases of infection and death are reported worldwide. This disease is associated with a wide range of symptoms, which makes accurate diagnosis of it difficult. During previous severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic in 2003, researchers found that the patients with fever, cough, or sore throat had a 5% influenza virus‐positive rate. This finding made us think that the wide range of symptoms and also relatively high prevalence of death in our patients may be due to the coinfection with other viruses. Thus, we evaluated the coinfection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) with other respiratory viruses in dead patients in North Khorasan. We evaluated the presence of influenza A/B virus, human metapneumovirus, bocavirus, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and parainfluenza viruses in 105 SARS‐CoV‐2 positive dead patients, using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and reverse transcription PCR tests. We found coinfection with influenza virus in 22.3%, RSV, and bocavirus in 9.7%, parainfluenza viruses in 3.9%, human metapneumovirus in 2.9%, and finally adenovirus in 1.9% of SARS‐CoV‐2 positive dead cases. Our findings highlight a high prevalence of coinfection with influenza A virus and the monopoly of coinfection with Human metapneumovirus in children. Highlights: The high prevalence of SARS‐CoV‐2 and influenza co‐infection can lead to an increase of death in patients and mislead the treatment protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Influenza viruses and human metapneumovirus (HMPV) are among the common causes of acute respiratory tract infections in children worldwide. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of HMPV and influenza viruses in children less than 5 years old hospitalized with severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) during 2013 - 2016. Methods: For this study, 770 nasopharyngeal swabs from children with SARIs were tested for detection of influenza viruses by One step real time RT-PCR method in National Influenza Center, Tehran, Iran. Influenza virus negative samples were tested for HMPV using One step RT-PCR kit. Results: Influenza viruses were detected in 263 of 770 specimens (34%) with influenza A/H1N1 being the prominent subtype. All 507 influenza negative samples were tested for HMPV. HMPV was detected in 7 (1.4%) cases. Conclusion: In this research two different viruses were detected in 35% of cases, the remaining 65% of the patients might have been infected by other viruses or bacteria. Active surveillance studies with large sample size in different geographical regions and population based studies besides hospitalized patients with SARIs are needed to obtain more data about respiratory infections epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]