Impact of COVID-19 epidemic on reported incidence of infectious diseases among children in Guangdong province: a hospital-based study

  Objective  To explore incidence features of notifiable infectious diseases among children seeking medication at a tertiary women and children′s hospital during the outbreak of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) for providing evidences to the prevention and control of childhood infectious disease.

  Methods  From China Information System for Disease Control and Prevention, we extracted the data on all notifiable infectious disease cases aged 0 – 14 years reported from January 2017 through June 2020 by a tertiary women and children′s hospital. The data on all l0 – 14 years old non-infectious disease outpatients and hospitalizations of the hospital during the same period were collected simultaneously. The features of childhood infectious diseases before and during the COVID-19 epidemic (February – June, 2020) were analyzed and compared statistically.

  Results  During the period, totally 56 609 childhood infectious disease cases were reported, accounting for 1.75% of all child patients (outpatients and inpatients) of the hospital. The proportion of reported infectious disease cases (0.30%) against all child patients of the hospital in the epidemic period was obviously low compared to that in the same period in 2017, 2018 and 2019, with the decreased ratios of 75.82%, 85.10% and 89.20% for the child patients aged 0 – 2, 3 – 5 and 6 – 14 years, respectively. Among all reported infectious disease cases, the top three diseases were influenza (n = 25 355, 44.79%), hand-foot-mouth disease (n = 20 936, 36.98%) and other infectious diarrhea disease (n = 7 180, 12.63%). A significant disparity in the composition of reported infectious diseases was observed between the epidemic period and the same duration of previous three years (χ² = 539.938, P < 0.001). Hand-foot-mouth disease, influenza, other infectious diarrhea disease, chickenpox and scarlatina were among the diseases with a decreased proportion to some extent reported during the epidemic period (P < 0.001).

  Conclusion  The COVID-19 epidemic exerts a certain impact on reported infectious diseases in children and the influence may be associated with the changes in medication seeking behaviors and implemented measures on the epidemic containment among the public.