Relationship between national changes in mobility due to non-pharmaceutical interventions and emergency department visits due to pediatric acute respiratory infections during the COVID-19 pandemic

Díaz, FrancoCarvajal, CristóbalGatica, SebastiánVásquez-Hoyos, PabloJabornisky, RobertoVon Moltke, RichardJaramillo-Bustamante, Juan CamiloPizarro, FedericoCruces, Pablo2023-05-232023-05-232022-01Diaz F, Carvajal C, Gatica S, Vasquez-Hoyos P, Jabornisky R, von Moltke R, Jaramillo-Bustamante JC, Pizarro F, Cruces P. Relationship between national changes in mobility due to non-pharmaceutical interventions and emergency department visits due to pediatric acute respiratory infections during the COVID-19 pandemic. medRxiv. 2022; 1. DOI: 10.1101/2022.06.16.22276017http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12254/3257Background Strong social distancing measures were quickly implemented in Chile during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. One of the aims of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) mandates was to decrease overcrowding, thus is usually measured as mobility changes. Methods we gather data from national health statistics for pediatric emergency (PED) visits for acute respiratory infection (ARI) in children younger than 15. We defined a historical cohort, including data from 2016 to 2019, and compared them with 2020 and 2021 pandemic years. Also, Chile’s national mobility reports from the online google database were downloaded. We tested the correlation between changes in mobility and relative reduction in PED-ARI by Spearman’s Rank Test. Results Historical data showed a mean of 46863 ± 3071 PED-ARI weekly visits with a high seasonal variation, with two peaks in weeks 20 and 28 and weeks 32 to 36. This transient drop was temporally associated with the mid-winter 2-week holiday of schools. The usual PED visits peaks did not occur in 2020 and 2021. Mobility declined from week 9, reaching lower than historical data from week 12 and a minimum of 43% in week 15 of 2020 . The correlation between mobility and PED-ARI visits showed a strong monotonic relationship (quadratic) with a Spearman’s rho of 0.80 (95% CI 0.75 to 0.86) . Conclusion NPI resulting in a decrease in mobility should be considered a robust public health measure to relieve the winter’s collapse of the national health system, decreasing morbimortality in children due to PED-ARI.enAtribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Chile (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 CL)PediatricsCOVID-19PARDSPandemicRelationship between national changes in mobility due to non-pharmaceutical interventions and emergency department visits due to pediatric acute respiratory infections during the COVID-19 pandemicArtículo0000-0003-4763-074X0000-0002-4892-50320000-0002-0880-9571https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.16.22276017