Anesthesia Departments Enabled Three Australian Pediatric SARS-CoV-2 Serosurveys

Australian anesthetic departments partnered with the Pediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance network to collect residual blood samples from children undergoing elective procedures, enabling three national SARS-CoV-2 serosurveys between 2020 and 2023. In an Anesthesiology Focal Point article, the authors describe this approach as an ethical, feasible and nationally representative way to assess infection- and vaccine-derived immunity in children, for whom routine blood sampling is difficult and residual samples are not commonly available. They report that the resulting data informed COVID-19 vaccination policy and understanding of pediatric infection burden and immunity. The experience illustrates a potential surveillance role for anesthetic departments beyond perioperative care. However, the supplied abstract does not report sample sizes, seroprevalence estimates, sampling methods or specific policy changes, limiting assessment of representativeness and impact.