Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jun 13, 2020
Date Accepted: Aug 1, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 4, 2020
Wearing masks, hand hygiene, and social distancing contribute to the decrease of influenza and all-cause pneumonia in coronavirus pandemic: a retrospective national epidemiological surveillance study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic was an important health crisis worldwide and several strategies were implemented to combat COVID-19, including social distancing, wearing masks and hand hygiene. The entire impact of COIVD-19 on other viral infections remained largely unclear.
Objective:
To investigate the impact of incidences of influenza virus infection, enterovirus infection, and all-cause pneumonia during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods:
We utilized the electronic database of national surveillance infectious disease statistics system of Taiwan and extracted the incidences of COVID-19, influenza virus, enterovirus, and all-cause pneumonia. We compared the incidences of these diseases from week 45 of 2017 to week 21 of 2020 and calculated the R-squared value of linear trend estimation.
Results:
The COIVD-19 pandemic began in week 4 of 2020. Influenza virus usually peaked in winter and decreased around week 14. However, a significant decrease of influenza was observed after week 8 of 2020. The R2 values for 2017–2020 were 0.037, 0.021, 0.046 and 0.6 respectively. A dramatic decrease of all-cause pneumonia was also reported (R2 values for 2017–2020 were 0.435, 0.098, 0.3519 and 0.8199 respectively). On the contrary, enterovirus increased by week 18 in 2017-2019 but it didn’t increase in 2020.
Conclusions:
Using this national epidemiological database, we found a significant decrease of influenza, enterovirus, and all-cause pneumonia during COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing, wearing masks and hand hygiene may contribute to decrease of infectious diseases and further studies are warranted to elucidate the causal relationship. Clinical Trial: Not applicable
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