Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Jul 10, 2023
Date Accepted: Mar 1, 2024
Epidemiological characteristics of varicella in Anhui Province, China, 2012-2021: A study based on surveillance data
ABSTRACT
Background:
Varicella is a mild, self-limited disease caused by Varicella-Zoster Virus (VZV) infection. Recently, the disease burden of varicella is increasing gradually in China, but it has not been reported in Anhui Province.
Objective:
This study aims to analyze the epidemiology of varicella in Anhui from 2012-2021.
Methods:
The epidemiological characteristics of varicella in Anhui from 2012 to 2021 were described. Spatial autocorrelation of varicella was explored using Moran index. Kulldorff's space-time scan statistic was used to analyze the spatio-temporal aggregation of varicella.
Results:
A total of 276,115 cases of varicella were reported from 2012 to 2021 in Anhui, with an average annual incidence of 44.8 per 100,000, and the highest incidence was 81.2 per 100,000 in 2019. Male cases were more than female, and children aged 5-14 years was the high-incidence group. There were two peaks of varicella incidence annually except for 2020, and the incidence was usually higher in winter peak than in summer. The incidence of varicella in southern Anhui was higher than that in northern Anhui. A positive spatial autocorrelation of varicella incidence existed at county level, and the high-high clusters were mainly distributed in the south of Anhui. Space-time scan analysis identified five possible clusters of areas.
Conclusions:
This study comprehensively described the epidemiology and changing trend of varicella in Anhui from 2012 to 2021, which provided a basis for future study and the formulation of varicella prevention and control policies in Anhui.
Citation
The author of this paper has made a PDF available, but requires the user to login, or create an account.
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.