Why crowding matters in the time of COVID-19 pandemic? - a lesson from the carnival effect on the 2017/2018 influenza epidemic in the Netherlands.
BMC Public Health
; 20(1): 1516, 2020 Oct 06.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-818085
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
To evaluate the association between crowding and transmission of viral respiratory infectious diseases, we investigated the change in transmission patterns of influenza and COVID-19 before and after a mass gathering event (i.e., carnival) in the Netherlands.METHODS:
Information on individual hospitalizations related to the 2017/2018 influenza epidemic were accessed from Statistics Netherlands. The influenza cases were stratified between non-carnival and carnival regions. Distributions of influenza cases were plotted with time and compared between regions. A similar investigation in the early outbreak of COVID-19 was also conducted using open data from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment.RESULTS:
Baseline characteristics between non-carnival and carnival regions were broadly similar. There were 13,836 influenza-related hospitalizations in the 2017/2018 influenza epidemic, and carnival fell about 1 week before the peak of these hospitalizations. The distributions of new influenza-related hospitalizations per 100,000 inhabitants with time between regions followed the same pattern with a surge of new cases in the carnival region about 1 week after carnival, which did not occur in the non-carnival region. The increase of new cases for COVID-19 in the carnival region exceeded that in the non-carnival region about 1 week after the first case was reported, but these results warrant caution as for COVID-19 there were no cases reported before the carnival and social measures were introduced shortly after carnival.CONCLUSION:
In this study, a mass gathering event (carnival) was associated with aggravating the spread of viral respiratory infectious diseases.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pneumonia, Viral
/
Crowding
/
Coronavirus Infections
/
Influenza, Human
/
Epidemics
/
Pandemics
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
English
Journal:
BMC Public Health
Journal subject:
Public Health
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S12889-020-09612-6
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS