Comparison of 19 major infectious diseases during COVID-19 epidemic and previous years in Zhejiang, implications for prevention measures

Abstract

Background The global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has attracted great public health efforts across the world. Few studies, however, have described the potential impact of these measures on other important infectious diseases. Methods The incidence of 19 major infectious diseases in Zhejiang Province was collected from the National Notifiable Infectious Disease Surveillance System from January 2017 to October 2020. The entire epidemic control phase was divided into three stages. The government deployed the first level response from 24 January to 2 March (the most rigorous measures). When the outbreak of COVID-19 was under control, the response level changed to the second level from 3 to 23 March, and then the third level response was implemented after 24 March. We compared the epidemiological characteristics of 19 major infectious diseases during different periods of the COVID-19 epidemic and previous years. Results A total of 1,814,881 cases of 19 infectious diseases were reported in Zhejiang from January 2017 to October 2020, resulting in an incidence rate of 8088.30 cases per 1,000,000 person-years. After the non-pharmaceutical intervention, the incidence of 19 infectious diseases dropped by 70.84%, from 9436.32 cases per 1,000,000 person-years to 2751.51 cases per 1,000,000 person-years, with the large decrease in the first response period of influenza. However, we observed that the daily incidence of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) and leptospirosis increased slightly (from 1.11 cases per 1,000,000 person-years to 1.82 cases per 1,000,000 person-years for SFTS and 0.30 cases per 1,000,000 person-years to 1.24 cases per 1,000,000 person-years for leptospirosis). There was no significant difference in the distribution of epidemiological characteristic of most infectious diseases before and during the implementation of COVID-19 control measures. Conclusion Our study summarizes the epidemiological characteristics of 19 infectious diseases and indicates that the rigorous control measures for COVID-19 are also effective for majority of infectious diseases.

Spatio-temporal evolution and trend prediction of the incidence of Class B notifiable infectious diseases in China: a sample of statistical data from 2007 to 2020

“…After verification and adoption of the selected best model using the data of 2020, the short-term forecast for 5 years from 2020 to 2024 was carried out using the best model. The results show that, firstly, compared with the predicted 2020incidence assuming no COVID-19 epidemic broke out, the actual 2020 incidence of Class B infectious diseases are smaller for both China as a whole and all the provinces (except Hubei Province), suggesting that the prevention and control measures taken in response to the COVID-19 epidemic are conducive to controlling the occurrence and development of other Class B notifiable infectious diseases, which is consistent with the results of existing studies [50][51][52]. The study suggests that it is the government's mandatory prevention and control strategies as well as the public's increasing awareness of personal health that works.…”

Roles for Pathogen Interference in Influenza Vaccination, with Implications to Vaccine Effectiveness (VE) and Attribution of Influenza Deaths

“…Lockdown has been incorrectly attributed due to a lack of wider knowledge regarding pathogen interference. However, regarding other non-influenza pathogens non-vaccine epidemiological interventions during COVID-19 will have played a role in the reduction in person-to-person transmission [ 161 ]. An example is given in Figure 3 for notifiable infectious diseases in England and Wales in the years before and after COVID-19.…”

Global “flu-ization” of COVID-19: A perspective from Vietnam

“…Although the drivers for this observation are multifactorial, decreased incidence of some pathogens likely resulted from the control measures and restrictions implemented in England in 2020, notably hand washing, disinfection, and physical distancing. A similar downward trend in the incidence of several major infectious illnesses, including cholera, typhoid and dysentery, was observed in China, which has implemented COVID-19 management policies similar to those in Vietnam (42). Public health approaches to outbreaks of past respiratory viral diseases such as the 2009 swine flu pandemic, where the effectiveness of identical procedures was shown in a number of countries, including China, Mexico and the USA, provide additional support for this argument (43).…”