First COVID-19 lockdown resulted in most respiratory viruses disappearing among hospitalised children, with the exception of rhinoviruses.
Acta Paediatr
; 111(7): 1399-1403, 2022 Jul.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1735870
ABSTRACT
AIM:
Emergency room admissions have decreased globally during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for respiratory diseases. We evaluated hospital admissions for respiratory diseases in the first year of the Italian pandemic and compared them with the corresponding period in 2016-2017.METHODS:
The study was carried out at the Sapienza University in Rome, Italy, and covered 9 March to 28 February 2020-2021 and 2016-2017. We tested 85 hospitalised children who were negative for the virus that causes COVID-19 in 2020-2021 and compared them with 476 hospitalised children from 2016-2017, as we had also tested nasal washing samples for 14 respiratory viruses during that period.RESULTS:
Hospitalisations for acute respiratory tract infections were 82.2% lower in 2020-2021 than 2016-2017. The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and several other viruses were detected less frequently during the pandemic. An extraordinary finding was that rhinoviruses remained seasonal. In 2020-2021, we detected a virus in 54.1% of the hospitalised children rhinoviruses in 41, RSV in 4 and other viruses in 1. This was significantly lower than the 71.6% in 2016-2017 RSV in 130, rhinoviruses in 128 and other viruses in 83.CONCLUSION:
Pandemic measures dramatically reduced childhood respiratory infections, particularly RSV, but were less effective at reducing rhinoviruses.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Respiratory Tract Infections
/
Viruses
/
Respiratory Syncytial Virus, Human
/
Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infections
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
Limits:
Child
/
Humans
/
Infant
Language:
English
Journal:
Acta Paediatr
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Apa.16326
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