Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Oct 31, 2022
Date Accepted: Mar 23, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: Mar 28, 2023
Epidemiological characteristics of respiratory syncytial virus among hospitalized children with acute respiratory tract infections during 2014−2022 from a hospital in Hubei Province, China: A Longitudinal Surveillance Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Longitudinal study characterizing the epidemic trend of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was scarce in Hubei Province, China.
Objective:
We aimed to depict the dynamics of the RSV epidemic during 2014−2022 in Hubei Province, and investigate the influence of the two-child policy and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on RSV prevalence.
Methods:
The medical records and testing results of the hospitalized children with acute respiratory tract infections (ARTI) were extracted from the Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Hubei Province. Nasopharyngeal samples were tested with direct immunofluorescence assay. Poisson regression models were used to investigate the association between RSV detection rate and age, gender, or diagnosis.
Results:
Among 75128 children with ARTI, 11.1% (8336/75128) were RSV-positive. The children with younger age and lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) had higher detection rates compared to those with older age and upper respiratory tract infection, respectively (15.9% vs. 5.5%, P < 0.001; 14.6% vs. 2.7%, P < 0.001). Since 2018, a higher level and a longer period of the RSV epidemic were observed. There was a moderate increase in the RSV detection rate after the two-child policy was implemented (11.2% vs. 8.2%, P < 0.001). The COVID-19 outbreak caused a sharp drop in RSV epidemic than usual shortly (9.4% vs. 2.8%, P < 0.001), but a rebounding epidemic occurred in the next years (11.8%, P < 0.001).
Conclusions:
The two-child policy might increase the RSV prevalence, COVID-19 had a temporary inhibitory effect on RSV transmission.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.