Human Mobility and Droplet-Transmissible Pediatric Infectious Diseases during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Ryusuke Ae; Yoshihide Shibata; Toshiki Furuno; Teppei Sasahara; Yosikazu Nakamura; Hiromichi Hamada

doi:10.3390/ijerph19116941

Human Mobility and Droplet-Transmissible Pediatric Infectious Diseases during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jun 6;19(11):6941. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19116941.

Authors

Ryusuke Ae¹, Yoshihide Shibata^{1

2}, Toshiki Furuno³, Teppei Sasahara¹, Yosikazu Nakamura¹, Hiromichi Hamada^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Public Health, Center for Community Medicine, Jichi Medical University, Yakushiji 3311-1, Shimotsuke 329-0498, Tochigi, Japan.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Gifu College, 2236-2 Kamimakuwa, Motosu 501-0495, Gifu, Japan.
³ Advanced Course for Interdisciplinary Technology Development, National Institute of Technology, Gifu College, 2236-2 Kamimakuwa, Motosu 501-0495, Gifu, Japan.
⁴ Department of Pediatrics, Tokyo Women's Medical University Yachiyo Medical Center, 477-96 Owada-Shinden, Yachiyo 276-0046, Chiba, Japan.
⁵ Department of Pediatrics, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuo-ku, Chiba-shi 260-8670, Chiba, Japan.

Abstract

The study tested the hypothesis that human mobility may be a potential factor affecting reductions in droplet-transmissible pediatric infectious diseases (PIDs) during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic mitigation period in 2020. An ecological study was conducted using two publicly available datasets: surveillance on infectious diseases collected by the Japanese government and COVID-19 community mobility reports presented by Google. The COVID-19 community mobility reports demonstrated percentage reductions in the movement of people over time in groceries and pharmacies, parks, and transit stations. We compared the weekly trends in the number of patients with droplet-transmissible PIDs identified in 2020 with those identified in the previous years (2015-2019) and assessed the correlations between the numbers of patients and percentage decreases in human mobility during 2020. Despite experiencing their peak seasons, dramatic reductions were found in the numbers of patients with pharyngoconjunctival fever (PCF) and group A streptococcal (GAS) pharyngitis after the tenth week of 2020. Beyond the 20th week, no seasonal peaks were observed in the number of patients with all PIDs identified in 2020. Significant correlations were found between the percentage decreases in human mobility in transit stations and the number of patients with hand-foot-and-mouth disease (Pearson correlation coefficient [95% confidence interval]: 0.65 [0.44-0.79]), PCF (0.47 [0.21-0.67]), respiratory syncytial virus infection (0.45 [0.19-0.66]), and GAS pharyngitis (0.34 [0.06-0.58]). The highest correlations were found in places underlying potential human-to-human contacts among adults. These findings suggest that reductions in human mobility for adults might contribute to decreases in the number of children with droplet-transmissible PIDs by the potential prevention of adult-to-child transmission.

Keywords: coronavirus disease-2019; droplet infectious disease; human mobility; movement of people; pandemic; pediatric infectious disease; social distancing.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Communicable Diseases* / epidemiology
Government
Humans
Pandemics / prevention & control
Pharyngitis*

Grants and funding

This study was supported by grants and funding from a non-profit organization, the Japan Kawasaki Disease Research Center (funding number: not applicable) and Chiba University (2004H0407). The study was also performed with the support and under the auspices of the NIFS Collaboration Research Program (NIFS20KBAS018).