About the Authors

Susan Meiring

susan.meiring@nhls.ac.za

Affiliation Division of Public Health Surveillance and Response, National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa

Cheryl Cohen

Affiliations Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Vanessa Quan

Affiliation Division of Public Health Surveillance and Response, National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa

Linda de Gouveia

Affiliation Division of Public Health Surveillance and Response, National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa

Charles Feldman

Affiliation Division of Pulmonology, Department of Internal Medicine, Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital and Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Alan Karstaedt

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine, Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Johannesburg, South Africa

Keith P. Klugman

Affiliations Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa, Department of Global Health, Hubert School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States of America

Shabir A. Madhi

Affiliations Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa, Medical Research Council: Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit, School of Pathology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation: Vaccine Preventable Diseases, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Helene Rabie

Affiliation Department of Pediatric Medicine, Tygerberg Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa

Charlotte Sriruttan

Affiliation Centre for Opportunistic, Tropical and Hospital-associated Infections, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa

Anne von Gottberg

Affiliations Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa, Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation: Vaccine Preventable Diseases, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

GERMS-SA

Membership of GERMS-SA is provided in the Acknowledgments.

Competing Interests

The authors have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: Anne von Gottberg has received research funding from Pfizer, however this does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. All other authors have no conflict of interest.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SM VQ AvG CC KPK. Analyzed the data: SM CC AvG VQ LdG. Wrote the paper: SM CC AvG LdG VQ CF AK HR CS SAM KPK. Data collection and management: SM VQ AvG LdG CC AK CF CS HR KPK.