Division of Public Health, Center for Community Medicine, Jichi Medical University, Yakushiji 3311-1, Shimotsuke 329-0498, Tochigi, Japan.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Gifu College, 2236-2 Kamimakuwa, Motosu 501-0495, Gifu, Japan.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jun 6;19(11):6941. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19116941.
The study tested the hypothesis that human mobility may be a potential factor affecting reductions in droplet-transmissible pediatric infectious diseases (PIDs) during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic mitigation period in 2020. An ecological study was conducted using two publicly available datasets: surveillance on infectious diseases collected by the Japanese government and COVID-19 community mobility reports presented by Google. The COVID-19 community mobility reports demonstrated percentage reductions in the movement of people over time in groceries and pharmacies, parks, and transit stations. We compared the weekly trends in the number of patients with droplet-transmissible PIDs identified in 2020 with those identified in the previous years (2015-2019) and assessed the correlations between the numbers of patients and percentage decreases in human mobility during 2020. Despite experiencing their peak seasons, dramatic reductions were found in the numbers of patients with pharyngoconjunctival fever (PCF) and group A streptococcal (GAS) pharyngitis after the tenth week of 2020. Beyond the 20th week, no seasonal peaks were observed in the number of patients with all PIDs identified in 2020. Significant correlations were found between the percentage decreases in human mobility in transit stations and the number of patients with hand-foot-and-mouth disease (Pearson correlation coefficient [95% confidence interval]: 0.65 [0.44-0.79]), PCF (0.47 [0.21-0.67]), respiratory syncytial virus infection (0.45 [0.19-0.66]), and GAS pharyngitis (0.34 [0.06-0.58]). The highest correlations were found in places underlying potential human-to-human contacts among adults. These findings suggest that reductions in human mobility for adults might contribute to decreases in the number of children with droplet-transmissible PIDs by the potential prevention of adult-to-child transmission.
在 2020 年冠状病毒病 2019（COVID-19）大流行缓解期间，人类流动性可能是影响飞沫传播的儿科传染病（PID）减少的一个潜在因素。本研究采用了两项公开数据集进行了生态研究：日本政府监测传染病的监测数据和谷歌发布的 COVID-19 社区流动性报告。COVID-19 社区流动性报告显示，人们在杂货店和药店、公园和地铁站的流动百分比随着时间的推移而减少。我们比较了 2020 年与前几年（2015-2019 年）识别出的飞沫传播 PID 患者的每周趋势，并评估了 2020 年患者数量与人类流动性百分比减少之间的相关性。尽管经历了高峰期，但在 2020 年的第 10 周后，咽结膜炎（PCF）和 A 组链球菌（GAS）咽炎患者的数量急剧减少。在第 20 周之后，2020 年识别出的所有 PID 患者的数量没有季节性高峰。在地铁站的人类流动性百分比减少与手足口病（手足口病）患者数量之间存在显著相关性（Pearson 相关系数[95%置信区间]：0.65 [0.44-0.79]），PCF（0.47 [0.21-0.67]），呼吸道合胞病毒感染（0.45 [0.19-0.66]）和 GAS 咽炎（0.34 [0.06-0.58]）。在潜在的成年人之间人与人接触的地方发现了最高的相关性。这些发现表明，成年人流动性的减少可能通过潜在地预防成人向儿童传播，从而导致飞沫传播 PID 的儿童数量减少。
