Epidemiological characteristics of common respiratory infectious diseases in children before and during the COVID-19 epidemic

Bing Wang; Xiangzhen Gai; Yuling Han; Yanqin Liu; Yun Zhang; Jing Sun; Miao Liu; Huafeng Yu; Zhenju Peng; Xiaoling Wei; Yuna Chang; Xiang Ma; Zhongtao Gai

doi:10.3389/fped.2023.1212658

Epidemiological characteristics of common respiratory infectious diseases in children before and during the COVID-19 epidemic

Front Pediatr. 2023 Aug 3:11:1212658. doi: 10.3389/fped.2023.1212658. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Bing Wang^#¹, Xiangzhen Gai^#², Yuling Han¹, Yanqin Liu¹, Yun Zhang¹, Jing Sun¹, Miao Liu¹, Huafeng Yu¹, Zhenju Peng³, Xiaoling Wei¹, Yuna Chang¹, Xiang Ma^{1

4}, Zhongtao Gai⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Respiratory Medicine, Children's Hospital Affiliated to Shandong, University (Jinan Children's Hospital), Jinan, China.
² School of Public Health, Shandong University, Jinan, China.
³ Department of Public Health, Children's Hospital Affiliated to Shandong, University (Jinan Children's Hospital), Jinan, China.
⁴ Children's Research Institute, Children's Hospital Affiliated to Shandong, University (Jinan Children's Hospital), Jinan, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), public's awareness of infection prevention and control has increased overall, and various prevention and control measures have been adopted. These measures may also have a certain impact on the occurrence of other infectious diseases. Therefore, we collected information on children with several respiratory infectious diseases in Jinan Children's Hospital in China from 2016 to 2022 and analyzed their changes.

Method: We collected data on age, sex and number of cases of pertussis, measles, scarlet fever, pulmonary tuberculosis, mumps and influenza, which were diagnosed by clinical and laboratory criteria, from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2022 in Jinan Children's Hospital in Jinan, Shandong Province, China. Data on the number of people affected by these diseases in China from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention were compared. Then, we processed the data by using WPS Excel 2019 and SPSS.

Results: A total of 12,225 cases were included in this study in Jinan Children's Hospital, which consisted of 3,688 cases of pertussis (2,200 cases before COVID-19 and 1,488 during COVID-19), 680 cases of measles (650 cases before COVID-19 and 30 during COVID-19), 4,688 cases of scarlet fever (4,001 cases before COVID-19 and 687 during COVID-19), 114 cases of tuberculosis (86 cases before COVID-19 and 28 during COVID-19), 449 cases of mumps (340 cases before COVID-19 and 109 during COVID-19) and 2,606 cases of influenza (1,051 cases before COVID-19 and 1,555 during COVID-19). The numbers of children in the hospital with pertussis, measles, scarlet fever, mumps and influenza decreased substantially during COVID-19 in 2020-2022 compared with numbers in 2016-2019, while numbers of patients in China with all six respiratory infectious diseases, including pulmonary tuberculosis, declined during the pandemic. A rebound of pertussis, scarlet fever and influenza was observed in 2021 and 2022.

Conclusions: The study found that viral pathogens such as those causing measles, mumps and influenza all decreased during the pandemic, after which influenza rebounded. Infection diseases caused by bacteria such as scarlet fever and pertussis also decreased during COVID-19, and then a rebound occurred. However, tuberculosis stayed relatively constant.

Keywords: COVID-19; children; influenza; measles; mumps; pertussis; pulmonary tuberculosis; scarlet fever.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Jinan Clinical Science and Technology Innovation Project (Project numbers 201907032 and 202025022), Jinan Municipal Health Commission Science and Technology Planning Project (Project number 2021-1-41) and Jinan Key Laboratory of Pediatric Respiratory diseases and Shandong Provincial Clinical Research Center for Children's Health and Disease [Project number SDPRC009].