Park SW, Messacar K, Douek DC, Spaulding AB, Metcalf CJE, Grenfell BT. Predicting the impact of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical intervention on short- and medium-term dynamics of enterovirus D68 in the US.
Epidemics 2024;
46:100736. [PMID:
38118274 DOI:
10.1016/j.epidem.2023.100736]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/15/2023] [Revised: 12/02/2023] [Accepted: 12/10/2023] [Indexed: 12/22/2023] Open
Abstract
Recent outbreaks of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) infections, and their causal linkage with acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), continue to pose a serious public health concern. During 2020 and 2021, the dynamics of EV-D68 and other pathogens have been significantly perturbed by non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19; this perturbation presents a powerful natural experiment for exploring the dynamics of these endemic infections. In this study, we analyzed publicly available data on EV-D68 infections, originally collected through the New Vaccine Surveillance Network, to predict their short- and long-term dynamics following the COVID-19 interventions. Although long-term predictions are sensitive to our assumptions about underlying dynamics and changes in contact rates during the NPI periods, the likelihood of a large outbreak in 2023 appears to be low. Comprehensive surveillance data are needed to accurately characterize future dynamics of EV-D68. The limited incidence of AFM cases in 2022, despite large EV-D68 outbreaks, poses further questions for the timing of the next AFM outbreaks.
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