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O059 - CHANGES IN THE GLOBAL INCIDENCE OF INVASIVE PNEUMOCOCCAL DISEASE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: DATA FROM THE INVASIVE RESPIRATORY INFECTION SURVEILLANCE (IRIS) INITIATIVE (ID 865)
Abstract
Background
IRIS was established to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on invasive diseases among all age groups caused by four major bacterial pathogens, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, Neisseria meningitidis and Streptococcus agalactiae. We previously demonstrated a significant association between the stringency of COVID-19 containment measures and reduced bacterial invasive disease early in the pandemic (https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(21)00077-7). Here, we focus on the reduction in invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) cases through 2021.
Methods
Reference laboratories in 29 countries submitted invasive disease data to a private project in PubMLST. We performed interrupted time series analyses to quantify the impact of pandemic-related response measures on IPD rates. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models were used to estimate effect sizes and forecast counterfactual trends for each country, 2018-2021.
Results
Nearly 90,000 IPD cases (75,465 and 14,228 cases in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, respectively) occurred from 2018-2021 among participating countries. Overall, the risk of IPD was reduced by 55% after the pandemic was officially declared in week 11 of 2020 (relative risk: 0.45; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.39-0.52). The reduction was similar in the Northern (57%; CI, 40-66%) and Southern (54%; CI, 45-60%) hemispheres. Overall, nearly 30,000 IPD cases (n=29,811; CI, 16,157-43,465) were estimated to have been averted since the beginning of the pandemic.
Conclusions
COVID-19 pandemic response measures were associated with a significant decrease in IPD across all countries participating in IRIS. IPD cases have started returning to pre-pandemic levels in some countries as pandemic restrictions are lifting and the IRIS members are closely monitoring these changes.