key: cord-0896377-1jj6kl37
authors: Skurnik, David; Rybak, Alexis; Yang, David Dawei; Pons, Stéphanie; Guedj, Romain; Levy, Corinne; Cohen, Robert; Gajdos, Vincent; Vasante, Loganayagi; Ouldali, Naïm; Angoulvant, François
title: Unexpected lessons from the COVID-19 lockdowns in France: Low impact of school opening on common communicable pediatric airborne diseases
date: 2020-12-29
journal: Clin Infect Dis
DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciaa1899
sha: ec2939f0bab714848d7f126a086d22d5b6f1526b
doc_id: 896377
cord_uid: 1jj6kl37

nan

David SKURNIK,M.D.,Ph.D., 1, 2, 3 Alexis RYBAK,M.D., 4, 5, 6 David Dawei YANG,M.D., 7, 8 , Stéphanie PONS, M.D.,Ph.D., 9 Romain GUEDJ,M.D.,Ph.D., 10, 11 Corinne LEVY, M.D., 5, 12 Robert COHEN, M.D., 5, 12 Vincent GAJDOS, M.D.,Ph.D., 13, 14 Loganayagi VASANTE, 15 Naïm OULDALI, M.D.,Ph.D, 5, 16 François ANGOULVANT, M.D., Ph.D., 7 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t Dear Editor, for government fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Health, Education, Economy all represent major priorities, and a fine tuning has to be found. [1] [2] [3] While vaccine development has opened the door to more optimism, to date SARS-CoV-2 infection rate is at its highest, [4] resulting to a national curfew imposed in France on October 10 th 2020, followed on October 30 th 2020 by a second lockdown (Figure S1) . We conducted a study based on a multicenter prospective French surveillance database, which includes all the pediatric emergency department (PED) visits and related hospital admissions.

Methods used in this study are available online (Supplemental_method). A total of 972,642 PED visits from January 1 st , 2017 to November 30 th , 2020 in 6 university hospitals were included. [7] Overall, 90,042 of these PED visits resulted in pediatric hospitalizations ( Figure 1A) . Figure 1B , the annual seasonal bronchiolitis outbreak caused by the respiratory syncytial virus was not observed so far in France compared to 2017, 2018 and 2019. Looking more closely at these bronchiolitis data, we found that the second lockdown had also a major impact on the number of patients hospitalized for bronchiolitis ( Figure 1C) . This impact on the second lockdown was also major on the total number of pneumonia and acute otitis media (AOM) diagnosed (Figure 1D-E) . In parallel, the social distancing and the national mandatory facial mask associated with the curfew seemed to have an effect on acute asthma exacerbation (AAE) and the common cold, effect that was A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t emphasized and extended after the start of the second lockdown ( Figure S2) . Finally, as previously described, the ongoing health measures, and probably in first the handwashing, were associated with a very low rate of acute gastro-enteritis even before the curfew ( Figure S3a) . As previously reported, none of these national decisions had any impact on the number of urinary tract infections ( Figure   S3b ). [7, 8] The low rates of bronchiolitis, AOM, common cold, AAE, pneumonia, and pediatric admission found A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t

We thank Valérie Soussan-Banini, Romain Basmaci, Alain Lefevre-Utile, Dominique Brun-Ney, and

Laure Beaujouan for their precious help.

CL reports grants from GSK, grants, personal fees and non-financial support from MSD, grants, personal fees and non-financial support from Pfizer, and grants from Sanofi, all for ACTIV, outside the submitted work. RC reports grants, personal fees and non-financial support from GSK, grants, personal fees and non-financial support from Merck, grants, personal fees and non-financial support from Pfizer, and grants, personal fees and non-financial support from Sanofi, outside the submitted work. All other authors declare no potential conflict of interest relevant to this article.

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