COVID-19 pandemic: Impact caused by school closure and national lockdown on pediatric visits and admissions for viral and non-viral infections, a time series analysis
Augoulvant et al Clinical Infectious Diseases, epublished June 03 2020
François ANGOULVANT, M.D., Ph.D., Naïm OULDALI, M.D., David Dawei YANG,M.D., Mathilde FILSER, Vincent GAJDOS, M.D.,Ph.D., Alexis RYBAK,M.D., Romain GUEDJ,M.D.,Ph.D. Valérie SOUSSAN-BANINI,M.D., Romain BASMACI,M.D.,Ph.D., Alain LEFEVRE-UTILE,M.D, Dominique BRUN-NEY,M.D., Laure BEAUJOUAN, David SKURNIK,M.D.,Ph.D.
Abstract:
A time series analysis of 871,543 pediatric emergency visits revealed that the COVID-19 lockdown and school closure were associated with a significant decrease in infectious diseases disseminated through airborne or fecal-oral transmissions: common cold, gastro-enteritis, bronchiolitis, acute otitis. No change was found for urinary tract infections.
Figure 1
Impact of lockdown on weekly pediatric emergency department visits and major pediatric infectious diseases, from January 1st, 2017 to April 19th, 2020.
- a: Overall PEDs visit (n=871,543).
- b: PEDs visits for Urinary Tract Infections (n= 5,001).
- c, d, e: PEDs visits for common cold (n= 67,210), acute gastroenteritis (n= 35,025), and acute otitis media (n= 27,810) respectively.
The black line shows the observed data. The bold red slope shows the model estimates based on observed data (quasi-poisson regression modeling). The bold blue slope shows the expected values without lockdown in the post-intervention period (quasi-poisson regression modeling). The start of the lockdown is indicated by the vertical black arrow.
Abbreviations: PEDs: Pediatric Emergency Departments