First COVID-19 lockdown resulted in most respiratory viruses disappearing among hospitalised children, with the exception of rhinoviruses

Abstract

Aim: Emergency room admissions have decreased globally during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for respiratory diseases. We evaluated hospital admissions for respiratory diseases in the first year of the Italian pandemic and compared them with the corresponding period in 2016-2017.

Methods: The study was carried out at the Sapienza University in Rome, Italy, and covered 9 March to 28 February 2020-2021 and 2016-2017. We tested 85 hospitalised children who were negative for the virus that causes COVID-19 in 2020-2021 and compared them with 476 hospitalised children from 2016-2017, as we had also tested nasal washing samples for 14 respiratory viruses during that period.

Results: Hospitalisations for acute respiratory tract infections were 82.2% lower in 2020-2021 than 2016-2017. The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and several other viruses were detected less frequently during the pandemic. An extraordinary finding was that rhinoviruses remained seasonal. In 2020-2021, we detected a virus in 54.1% of the hospitalised children: rhinoviruses in 41, RSV in 4 and other viruses in 1. This was significantly lower than the 71.6% in 2016-2017: RSV in 130, rhinoviruses in 128 and other viruses in 83.

Conclusion: Pandemic measures dramatically reduced childhood respiratory infections, particularly RSV, but were less effective at reducing rhinoviruses.

Keywords: acute communicable diseases; face masks; hospitalisation; respiratory viruses; social distancing.

FIGURE 1

Distribution of viral infections from 9 March to 28 February, 2016–2017 (pre‐pandemic) and 2020–2021 (pandemic). The white area indicates when schools were closed and the grey area indicates when schools were open. The strict lockdown period lasted from 9 March to 3 May 2020, and this was followed by 2 periods of more relaxed restrictions. (A) 2016–2017. Schools were opened until June 2016 and then from September 2016 until the end of the observational period. (B) 2020–2021. Schools were closed during the strict lockdown period and summer and reopened from September 2020 until the end of the observational period