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China has seen a sharp decline in reports of many infectious diseases this year, as the Covid-19 pandemic has greatly reduced social gatherings and increased implementation of hygiene measures.
Experts welcomed the decline as a motivator for the public to continue to practice greater personal hygiene. But they also warned against possible underreporting of diseases due to reluctance to visit the doctor during the pandemic.
From January to July, the country recorded around 3.7 million cases of its 40 notifiable infectious diseases. That was a 25 percent decline from the average of the past three years for the same period, leading breathing expert Zhong Nanshan said during a conference in late August, citing reports from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The phenomenon indicates that disease control measures targeting Covid-19 are also effective in slowing the spread of other infectious diseases,” he said. The widespread adoption of such simple behaviors as maintaining social distancing, wearing masks and regular hand washing appears to be inhibiting the spread of all contagious diseases.
The steepest drop was for pathogens transmitted primarily through respiratory droplets and those that primarily affect young children, reports show.
During the 2019-20 flu outbreak, new cases from November through January far exceeded the 2018-2019 flu season. But since then the number has plummeted, with about 59,000 in February and 22,000 in March, compared to more than 307,000 in February 2019 and almost 360,000 in March 2019.
The tipping point coincided with increased travel restrictions and rising alerts about the new coronavirus across the country. Wuhan, in Hubei province, the city hardest hit by the pandemic in China, was blockaded on January 23.
[[nid:481882]]New reports of mumps, measles, and foot and mouth disease also began to decline significantly from February and have remained at relatively low levels compared to previous years.
Chen Yinghu, head of the infectious disease department at the Children’s Hospital affiliated with the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, told local media that his outpatient services generally cared for about 10 confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth disease. per day in June. and July of each year, but this year, only one or two infected children had visited each day.
“During the epidemic, young children have avoided going out and large crowds, and have donned masks in public spaces. These habits can effectively prevent virus transmission among the young population,” he said.
However, he said such viruses can be temporarily suppressed but not removed. “As people resume their daily routines, they may return. Therefore, parents should ensure that hygienic practices are maintained, especially when spending time in high-risk areas,” Chen said.
The latest regional data from August, when most of China had fully reopened, seemed to suggest that recommended hygiene habits have taken hold.
In Sichuan province, new cases of influenza, mumps, and foot-and-mouth disease in August fell by half a year. Shanxi, Gansu and Anhui provinces have also recorded low levels of infectious diseases compared to last year.
[[nid:480593]]Deng Ying, director of the Beijing Preventive Medicine Association, said that the pandemic has indeed provided a lesson to society on public health. Practices such as the use of masks, the presentation of health codes on mobile phones and keeping a meter between each person in public spaces have become almost part of the new normal ”.
Yang Fang, a kindergarten teacher in Jiangsu Province, said that in the first half of the year, most families who were able to care for children at home were not willing to send them to kindergartens.
With offline teaching started for the fall, unwell children will be sent home immediately and disinfection measures have been intensified. “These measures will be in place for a long time,” she said.
However, the same lockdown and social distancing measures can make it difficult to control the spread of some viruses in the long term, Huang Fei, a researcher at the China CDC, said in late August.
Huang said that in the first quarter of the year, the number of patients who came to clinics for tuberculosis symptoms fell by nearly 260,000 from the average of about 800,000 in the past three years.
“This suggests that some patients who had shown suspicious symptoms might choose not to see a doctor. In the meantime, follow-up checkups for infected patients and checkups for drug-resistant cases might also be interrupted,” he said.
