Regional Epidemiology of Common Respiratory Viruses In Hangzhou, China: Did It Change after Global Pandemic of COVID-19?

Abstract

Background: Respiratory infection poses a heavy burden to people and social health care. Adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza A virus and influenza B virus are common viruses that cause respiratory infections. The global pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) last year has had a significant impact and may have changed the prevalence situation of common respiratory viruses.Objective: To analyse the changes of common virus in respiratory infections before and after the outbreak of COVID-19 in Hangzhou, China since October 2017.Methods: We analysed the clinical statistic about patients who visited outpatient and the inpatient department in Hangzhou Normal University affiliated hospital retrospectively from October 1, 2017 to February 28, 2021 and were simultaneously collected throat or nose swab for testing respiratory virus antigen (including influenza A virus, influenza B virus, respiratory syncytial virus, adenovirus). The data concludes the number of samples, numbers of virus positive detection cases, patients' age, gender, etc.Results: A total of 121,529 samples were collected, including 78,085 samples aged 0-14 years and 39,637 samples aged 15 years and above. Among all the samples, 13200 cases(10·86%) were positive for influenza A virus(IFVA), 8402 cases(6·91%) were positive for influenza B virus(IFVB), 6056 cases (4·98%) were positive for adenovirus(ADV), and 4739 (3·90%) were positive for respiratory syncytial virus(RSV). The positive rate of each virus was higher in patients younger than 14 years than that in patients older than 14 years. The positive rate of IFVA and RSV had no significant difference in gender. For people aged 0-14 years, the positive rate of ADV in males was higher than that in females. After the outbreak of COVID-19, the infection rate of IFVA or IFVB decreased significantly, the infection rate of adenovirus decreased somewhat, and the infection rate of RSV was still high and it showed no significant changes in epidemic season of RSV.Conclusion: After the spread of COVID-19, the infection of influenza virus and ADV decreased probably due to wearing masks, popularization of vaccination, reduction of crowd gathering activities, improvement of air quality because of the reduction of industrial activities, et al. But the prevalence of respiratory syncytial virus does not change significantly, maybe relating to it’s susceptible population. The epidemic characteristics of respiratory common virus are affected by virus type, age, season, sex and region.Funding Statement: This work is supported by grants from the Zhejiang Province Medicine and Health Science and Technology Project (2012KYA156).Declaration of Interests: No conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, are declared by the authors.Ethics Approval Statement: The study plan has been approved by Scientific Ethics Committee of the clinical medical college of Hangzhou Normal University