A detailed analysis was done on data collected from two sentinel clinics, coded S1 and S2, which had sent samples to our laboratory consistently and reliably throughout the seven-year study period. A total of 2570 specimens were collected from 1894 cases during the 7 years. Of the 1894 cases, specimens from 1804 (95%) were subjected to virus isolation. A total of 2272 specimens were subjected to virus isolation, thus ensuring that the majority of specimens from the majority of cases were tested (88.4% of specimens from 95% of cases).