Impact of COVID-19 prevention and control on tuberculosis and scarlet fever in China’s Guizhou (preprint)

ABSTRACT

China has implemented a series of long-term measures for the public in order to control spread of COVID-19,whether these measures will affect other chronic and acute respiratory infectious diseases and what kind of impact are unclear. Tuberculosis (TB) and scarlet fever (SF) as the representative of chronic and acute respiratory infectious diseases respectively,and China’s Guizhou was an area with high prevalence of TB and SF ,with about 40,000 TB and hundreds of SF cases were reported every year.To assess impact of COVID-19 prevention and control on TB and SF in China’s Guizhou, exponential smoothing method was used to establish a prediction model to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the number of TB and SF cases in Guizhou,and spatial aggregation analysis was used to describe the spatial changes of TB and SF before and after the outbreak of COVID-19.The parameters of TB and SF prediction models are R²=0.856, BIC=10.972;R²=0.714,BIC=5.325, respectively.TB and SF cases declined rapidly at the beginning of COVID-19 prevention and control,but SF cases number in decline for about 3-6 months,TB cases number remained in decline for 7 months after implementation for 11 months. Spatial aggregation of TB and SF did not change much before and after the COVID-19 outbreak but decreased significantly.Our fndings indicated that China's COVID-19 prevention and control measures also reduced TB and SF prevalence in Guizhou, these measures may lead to a long-term beneficial impact on TB, but a short-term on SF. Area with high TB incidence may benefit from COVID-19 experiences in the future.