Influence of non-pharmaceutical interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic on respiratory viral infections - a prospective population-based cohort study

Nadja Käding; Frederike Waldeck; Bjarne Meier; Sébastien Boutin; Max Borsche; Alexander Balck; Bandik Föh; Jan Kramer; Christine Klein; Alexander Katalinic; Jan Rupp

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2024.1415778

Influence of non-pharmaceutical interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic on respiratory viral infections - a prospective population-based cohort study

Front Public Health. 2024 Jun 24:12:1415778. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1415778. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Lübeck, Germany.
² Airway Research Center North (ARCN), Member of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), Lübeck, Germany.
³ Institute of Neurogenetics, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany.
⁴ Department of Medicine I, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Lübeck, Germany.
⁵ LADR Laboratory Group Dr. Kramer and Colleagues, Geesthacht, Germany.
⁶ Institute of Social Medicine and Epidemiology, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) have been proven successful in a population-based approach to protect from SARS-CoV-2 transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a consequential-effect, a reduction in the spread of all respiratory viruses has been observed, but the primary factors behind this phenomenon have yet to be identified. We conducted a subgroup analysis of participants from the ELISA study, a prospective longitudinal cohort study on SARS-CoV-2 transmission, at four timepoints from November 2020 - September 2022. The aim was to provide a detailed overview of the circulation of respiratory viruses over 2 years and to identify potential personal risk factors of virus distribution. All participants were screened using qPCR for respiratory viral infections from nasopharyngeal swabs and answered a questionnaire regarding behavioral factors. Several categories of risk factors for the transmission of respiratory viruses were evaluated using a scoring system. In total, 1,124 participants were included in the study, showing high adherence to governmental-introduced NPI. The overall number of respiratory virus infections was low (0-4.9% of participants), with adenovirus (1.7%), rhino-/enterovirus (3.2%) and SARS-CoV-2 (1.2%) being the most abundant. We detected an inverse correlation between the number and intensity of NPI and the number of detected respiratory viruses. More precisely, the attendance of social events and household size was associated with rhino-/enterovirus infection while social contacts were associated with being positive for any virus. NPI introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the occurrence of seasonal respiratory viruses in our study, showing different risk-factors for enhanced transmission between viruses.

Trial registration: DRKS.de, German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS), Identifier: DRKS00023418, Registered on 28 October 2020.

Keywords: behavioral factors; infection risk; non-pharmaceutical interventions; respiratory viruses; virus distribution.

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Aged
COVID-19* / epidemiology
COVID-19* / prevention & control
COVID-19* / transmission
Female
Germany / epidemiology
Humans
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Middle Aged
Physical Distancing
Prospective Studies
Respiratory Tract Infections* / epidemiology
Respiratory Tract Infections* / prevention & control
Respiratory Tract Infections* / virology
Risk Factors
SARS-CoV-2*
Young Adult

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF/NUM) within the B-FAST program (AP6 risk settings), the Ministry of Education, Science and Cultural Affairs of the State of Schleswig-Holstein, and a crowdfunding campaign of the University of Luebeck.