Severe complicated influenza declined during the prevention of COVID-19 in Taiwan

Abstract

The study of face masks use in Latin America reported by Soto et al is quite interesting 1. SARS-CoV2 (COVID19) is a novel coronavirus that has caused a critical public threat worldwide. How to prevent the COVID-19 outbreak is a crucial issue and communitybased preparedness is important. SARS-CoV2 is transmitted through droplets and contact transmission routes, and the Taiwan government has taken many proactive and aggressive actions to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, including wearing face masks. These strategies have not only controlled COVID-19 transmission but also reduced influenza infection in Taiwan. Although Taiwan is geographically close to China, the number of confirmed cases with COVID-19 in Taiwan is significantly lower than in other neighboring countries, with fewer than 450 confirmed COVID-19 cases and limited community transmission. The Taiwan government has acted swiftly since January to prevent the COVID-19 outbreak crisis by implementing measures such as border control, case identification and isolation, quarantine of suspected cases, extending holidays, travel restriction, education and big data integration. In addition, the export of face masks was prohibited on January 24, 2020 to avoid a shortage. In addition to these proactive early decisions, the Taiwan government acquired all available face masks and assigned most of them to hospital staff first in order to protect them from COVID-19. Moreover, mask making machine manufacturers were asked to step up face mask production capacity, which rose from 1.3 million per day to 13 million per day by the end of March 2020. Based on the previous experience of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the Taiwan CDC encouraged residents to wear face masks and perform hand hygiene, especially hospital staff and people in crowded places when the COVID-19 outbreak was initially reported in Wuhan, China in January 2020 2. Recently, the Taiwan CDC announced regulations requiring all passengers using public transportation to wear face masks all the time and follow the social distancing recommendations. This successful policy not only controlled the community transmission of COVID-19, but also had an unexpected effect on lowering the incidence of severe complicated influenza after the sixth week this year based on the public records of the

Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions targeted at COVID-19 pandemic on influenza burden – a systematic review

“…Of the 23 included studies, the results related to comparative seasons are presented. The majority of the studies (n=18) describe results from the Asian region [21][22][23][24][26][27][28][29][30][31]33,34,36,[39][40][41]43], 9 from North America [21,27,28,32,37,38,[41][42][43] and 5 from Europe [21,25,27,28,41]. The observation period of the studies in the 2020 season ends in the 8 th [26] to 21 st [38] calendar week.…”

“…The observation period of the studies in the 2020 season ends in the 8 th [26] to 21 st [38] calendar week. In total, the influenza estimates are compared with up to 1 [22,24,29,36,39,43], 2 [26,28,37], 3 [23,31,34,35,42], 4 [25,32,40], 5 [21,27,33], 6 [30] comparison seasons or a mean value of past seasons [24,34,38,41]. All studies present their results descriptively.…”

“…In addition, 9 studies give information on samples tested for influenza viruses [21,24,27,[29][30][31]33,34,43]. Four studies additionally show results on serious complications related to influenza virus infection [23,29,32,40], including 1 reporting mortality [32] (table 2). Until the seasonal peak, the ILI curve in the 2019/2020 season is similar to the comparative season.…”

“…Three studies from Taiwan [23,29,40] report weekly cases of serious complications due to influenza. The cases in 2020 show an earlier negative trend compared to the previous season.…”

“…Most of the studies summarise NPIs in varying degrees of detail. Almost all studies report social distancing measures [22][23][24]26,28,29,[31][32][33][34][35][36][38][39][40][41][42]. Two studies refer to a mobility index [21,28].…”