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. 2021 Feb 5;13(1):148-160.
doi: 10.3390/idr13010016.

Implications of the COVID-19 Lockdown on Dengue Transmission in Malaysia

Song-Quan Ong  1   2 , Hamdan Ahmad  3 , Ahmad Mohiddin Mohd Ngesom  4
Affiliations

Implications of the COVID-19 Lockdown on Dengue Transmission in Malaysia

Song-Quan Ong et al. Infect Dis Rep. .

Abstract

We aim to investigate the effect of large-scale human movement restrictions during the COVID-19 lockdown on both the dengue transmission and vector occurrences. This study compared the weekly dengue incidences during the period of lockdown to the previous years (2015 to 2019) and a Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model that expected no movement restrictions. We found that the trend of dengue incidence during the first two weeks (stage 1) of lockdown decreased significantly with the incidences lower than the lower confidence level (LCL) of SARIMA. By comparing the magnitude of the gradient of decrease, the trend is 319% steeper than the trend observed in previous years and 650% steeper than the simulated model, indicating that the control of population movement did reduce dengue transmission. However, starting from stage 2 of lockdown, the dengue incidences demonstrated an elevation and earlier rebound by four weeks and grew with an exponential pattern. We revealed that Aedes albopictus is the predominant species and demonstrated a strong correlation with the locally reported dengue incidences, and therefore we proposed the possible diffusive effect of the vector that led to a higher acceleration of incidence rate.

Keywords: Aedes aegypti; Aedes albopictus; dengue fever; movement control order.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Dengue endemic growth from the years 2015 to 2020. Eight stages: Pre2, Pre–lockdown 2; Pre1, Pre–lockdown 1; P1, Phase 1; P2, Phase 2; P3, Phase 3; P4, Phase 4; P5, Phase 5; P6, Phase 6.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Comparison between actual weekly dengue incidence from the 1st week of 2015 to the 35th week of 2020 with a SARIMA model before and after the duration of partial lockdown. ULC, upper confidence level and LCL, lover confidence level of the SARIMA model.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of dengue incidences of mean, simulation (SARIMA model) and year 2020 for eight phases of COVID-19 partial lockdown in Malaysia. Pre—Pre-lockdown; P—phase.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Correlation of total counts of Aedes albopictus outdoor sampling from Northeast Penang Island District with number of incidences in Penang.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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