The study says notification of pandemic alterations of infectious diseases

With the healthcare community very much focused on COVID-19 since the first quarter of 2020, there have been concerns about the possibility of having affected the notification of other infectious diseases and the resulting data that allow them to be treated and controlled more. effective.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Southern California analyzed the number of reported cases of 42 infectious diseases statewide and nationally between March 2020 and March 2021, compared to those recorded over the previous five years. Their findings were reported online in the journal on June 7, 2021 Clinical infectious diseases.

The researchers sought notification of differences by geographical location and by five routes of transmission: sexual, transmitted by food / water, transmitted by vectors (such as mosquito transmission), associated with injecting and respiratory drug use.

Among the highlights of the study was an 82% nationwide drop in the number of mumps cases reported in 2020, compared to the previous year. Between the same dates, the number of reported cases of chlamydia in the United States fell by almost 15%, from 1.57 million to 1.34 million.

“We found substantial differences in disease reporting between 2019 and 2020 via transmission, with the largest relative decrease (almost 51%) seen respiratory diseases“says Matthew Crane, a medical student in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study. “There were also significant decreases in drug – related illnesses [47%], vector-borne diseases [44%] and food /water-borne diseases [40%]. “

Regarding the variation of reports by geographic location, Crane says he and his colleagues found decreases of 50% or more in 2020 over 2019 in five states: Hawaii (75%), Kentucky (66% ), Nebraska (65%), Missouri (59)%) and North Dakota (55%). Five other states had declines between 40% and 49%, three states were between 30% and 39%, and seven states were between 20% and 29%. There have been decreases in infectious disease reporting in 34 states during the pandemic compared to the 2015-2019 period.

“Overall, we have detected a decrease in the reports of almost all of which should be reported nationally infectious diseases and conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, “Crane says.” These decreases were found at the national and state levels, and appeared in all disease transmission pathways we studied. “

Crane says it is unknown whether the observed declines indicate a real reduction in cases of infectious diseases or a deterioration in the notification of typical diseases during the pandemic.

“We believe both factors probably contributed to our findings,” he says.

Based on these findings and similar results in a previous study analyzing pandemic-based variations in the report for sexually transmitted infections: Researchers believe there is a fundamental need for more investment in disease surveillance to understand whether the transmission of infectious diseases may have been incomplete during the COVID-19 pandemic.