Frontiers in Public Health (Jun 2024)

Influence of non-pharmaceutical interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic on respiratory viral infections – a prospective population-based cohort study

  • Nadja Käding,
  • Frederike Waldeck,
  • Bjarne Meier,
  • Sébastien Boutin,
  • Sébastien Boutin,
  • Max Borsche,
  • Alexander Balck,
  • Bandik Föh,
  • Jan Kramer,
  • Christine Klein,
  • Alexander Katalinic,
  • Jan Rupp

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1415778
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12

Abstract

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Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) have been proven successful in a population-based approach to protect from SARS-CoV-2 transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a consequential-effect, a reduction in the spread of all respiratory viruses has been observed, but the primary factors behind this phenomenon have yet to be identified. We conducted a subgroup analysis of participants from the ELISA study, a prospective longitudinal cohort study on SARS-CoV-2 transmission, at four timepoints from November 2020 – September 2022. The aim was to provide a detailed overview of the circulation of respiratory viruses over 2 years and to identify potential personal risk factors of virus distribution. All participants were screened using qPCR for respiratory viral infections from nasopharyngeal swabs and answered a questionnaire regarding behavioral factors. Several categories of risk factors for the transmission of respiratory viruses were evaluated using a scoring system. In total, 1,124 participants were included in the study, showing high adherence to governmental-introduced NPI. The overall number of respiratory virus infections was low (0–4.9% of participants), with adenovirus (1.7%), rhino−/enterovirus (3.2%) and SARS-CoV-2 (1.2%) being the most abundant. We detected an inverse correlation between the number and intensity of NPI and the number of detected respiratory viruses. More precisely, the attendance of social events and household size was associated with rhino−/enterovirus infection while social contacts were associated with being positive for any virus. NPI introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the occurrence of seasonal respiratory viruses in our study, showing different risk-factors for enhanced transmission between viruses.Trial registrationDRKS.de, German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS), Identifier: DRKS00023418, Registered on 28 October 2020.

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