Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Research Institute for Health Development, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran.
Department of Health Services Management, Faculty of Management and Information, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Immun Inflamm Dis. 2022 Aug;10(8):e672. doi: 10.1002/iid3.672.
COVID-19 pandemic caused infection when influenza was still prevalent. This study was conducted to examine influenza incidence overlapped with COVID-19 and the effect of the COVID-19 measures on influenza incidence as a proxy.
The routine sentinel surveillance data on COVID-19 and influenza was obtained from the national integrated care electronic health record system. Data were collected in 28 points from 11 months before the outbreak (from March 2019 to January 2020) and 17 months after the outbreak (February 2020 to June 2021).
In Iran, the incidence rate of influenza was 51.1 cases per 100,000 populations in November 2019, while it was only 0.1 in November 2020. The average number of influenza cases specifically for the Kurdistan province during the seasonal flu peak in 2019-2020 was 2.5 cases per 100,000 populations, while the average of influenza cases in the preceding 4 years was 0.4 cases per 100,000 populations. In other words, the seasonal peak of influenza in Iran was significantly higher than that of previous and after years.
It seems that some of the nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) used to control COVID-19 are effective against influenza epidemics and the results indicated a marked decline in the number of influenza cases may cause after the implementation of public health measures for COVID-19. The results showed the seasonal peak of influenza in Iran was significantly higher than that of previous years, so it seems that the influenza winter peak season (November 2019) overlapped with SARS-CoV-2 causing observed undetected infection during influenza winter peak.
新冠疫情流行期间流感仍在流行，导致了感染。本研究旨在检测新冠疫情与流感同时发生的情况，并以流感发病率作为替代指标，评估新冠疫情防控措施对流感发病率的影响。
从国家综合医疗电子健康记录系统获取常规哨点监测的新冠疫情和流感数据。数据收集从疫情暴发前 11 个月（2019 年 3 月至 2020 年 1 月）开始，到疫情暴发后 17 个月（2020 年 2 月至 2021 年 6 月）结束。
在伊朗，2019 年 11 月流感发病率为每 10 万人 51.1 例，而 2020 年 11 月仅为 0.1 例。2019-2020 年季节性流感高峰期间，库尔德斯坦省流感特定病例的平均数量为每 10 万人 2.5 例，而前 4 年的流感平均病例数为每 10 万人 0.4 例。换句话说，伊朗的季节性流感高峰明显高于前几年和后几年。
似乎用于控制新冠疫情的一些非药物干预（NPI）措施对流感流行有效，结果表明，由于实施了新冠疫情公共卫生措施，流感病例数量明显下降。结果表明，伊朗的流感高峰季节明显高于前几年，因此，似乎流感冬季高峰（2019 年 11 月）与 SARS-CoV-2 同时发生，导致在流感冬季高峰期间观察到未被检测到的感染。
