From this early set of specimens, we were able to isolate an enterovirus from 44% of the throat swabs, 40% of the rectal swabs, 44% of the mouth ulcers and 66% of the vesicle swabs. Clearly vesicle swabs are very useful specimens, but only 18% of the children had had vesicle swabs taken because not all children presented with skin lesions filled with abundant fluid. Since throat swabs provided a reasonably high yield of enterovirus isolates, we made the decision in 2000, to require throat swabs as the primary specimen from the sentinel clinics, with vesicle swabs where possible, while rectal swabs were not required. This served to reduce the laboratory workload during an outbreak.