Pediatric Non-COVID-19 Community-Acquired Pneumonia in COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction: The COVID-19 lockdown strategies were associated with a significant decrease in infectious diseases disseminated through airborne or fecal-oral transmissions. Social distancing and other lockdown strategies effectively slowed down the spread of common respiratory viral diseases and decreased the need for hospitalization among children. Thus, a decline in the incidence of respiratory viral diseases had been reported following the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the trend of non-COVID-19 pneumonia in children remains uncertain. This study aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of non-COVID-19 community-acquired pneumonia in children. Materials and Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of all patients (age <= 18 years) presenting with pulmonary infection from January 2019 to December 2020 in a tertiary-level teaching hospital. We compared the number of pediatric patients admitted to our hospital with community-acquired pneumonia from January to December 2020 to those from the same period in 2019. Results: A total of 65 patients were diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia in 2019 and 18 in 2020. The number of patients with community-acquired pneumonia in 2020 was lower than that in 2019 by 47 cases in 2020. The most age distribution of pediatric patients with community-acquired pneumonia was 2-5 years in 2019, indicating the decreasing number of community-acquired pneumonia patients from 36 patients in 2019 to 3 in 2020. Conclusion: The number of pediatric with community-acquired pneumonia was lower than in the same period in 2019, which markedly decreased (-72.3%) in 2020. These interventions applied to control the COVID-19 pandemic were effective not only in substantial changes in the seasonal influenza activity but also in decreasing cases of pediatric community-acquired pneumonia.

Automated summary

The study revealed a significant decrease in the number of children diagnosed with non-COVID-19 community-acquired pneumonia during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the age group of 2-5 years. The interventions applied to control the COVID-19 outbreak not only affected seasonal influenza activity but also led to a marked reduction in pediatric community-acquired pneumonia cases.