Keywords:
Characteristics, Children, COVID-19, Pneumonia
Introduction
Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of death amongst children worldwide. It accounts for more than 138 million new cases and almost one million deaths annually, mostly amongst children under 5 years old1, 2. Numerous pathogens, both viral and bacterial, are involved in pediatric pneumonia. Research showed a concomitant decrease in all‐cause pneumonia during the COVID‐19 pandemic in China3. These changes might have come from the competition of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) with other respiratory viruses, but they were more likely to have come from improvements in population hygiene practices to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission, such as wearing facemasks, paying attention to hand hygiene4.
SARS-CoV-2 is the third zoonotic and highly pathogenic coronavirus to emerge in the twenty-first century5. And the virus has underwent frequent mutations and recombinations, yielding new variants that can cross the species barrier6. The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified five variants of concern as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and the latest one named Omicron7. COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China5. On 11 March 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the number of globally confirmed COVID-19 cases has been increasing exponentially, which has engendered substantial health and economic burdens worldwide8. Governmental agencies of different countries worldwide have been widely promoting several measures to prevent the COVID-19 outbreak. Before the vaccination programme at the end of 2020, the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic mainly relied on preventive measures, including encouraging individual-level hygiene (wearing a mask outside, keeping social distance, disinfecting with alcohol and washing hands frequently) and community-level prevention measures (promotion of remote work and study, suspension of mass gathering)9-12. These non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) not only decrease the spreading of the SARS-CoV-2, but also have impact on the prevalence of other pathogens13-15. Moreover, public health measures during COVID-19 have led to an unprecedented change in social lifestyle which might have effect on the allergen sensitization and micronutrient levels in population16, 17.
In this context, our study aimed to compare the pathogen, allergen and micronutrient characteristics of pediatric inpatients with pneumonia prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic in a large tertiary hospital in Shanghai, China. We present this article in accordance with the STROBE reporting checklist.
Methods