Pr Robert Cohen, Alexis Rybak, Andreas Werner, Stéphane Béchet, Roxane Desandes, Fréderic Hassid, Jean-Marie André, Nathalie Gelbert, Georges Thiebault, Fabienne Kochert, Fabienne Cahn-Sellem, François Vié Le Sage, Pr François Angoulvant, Naïm Ouldali, Bruno Frandji, and Corinne Levy
Covid-19 pandemic control has imposed several non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Strict application of these measures has had a dramatic reduction on the epidemiology of several infectious diseases. As the pandemic is ongoing for more than 2 years, some of these measures have been removed, mitigated, or less well applied. The aim of this study is to investigate the trends of pediatric ambulatory infectious diseases before and up to two years after the onset of the pandemic.We conducted a prospective surveillance study in France with 107 pediatricians specifically trained in pediatric infectious diseases. From January 2018 to April 2022, the electronic medical records of children with an infectious disease were automatically extracted. The annual number of infectious diseases in 2020 and 2021 was compared to 2018-2019 and their frequency was compared by logistic regression.From 2018 to 2021, 185,368 infectious diseases were recorded. Compared to 2018 (While during NPIs strict application, the overall frequency of community-acquired infections was reduced, after relaxation of these measures, a rebound of some of them (enteroviral infections, bronchiolitis, gastroenteritis, otitis) occurred beyond the pre-pandemic level. These findings highlight the need for continuous surveillance of infectious diseases, especially insofar as future epidemics are largely unpredictable.ACTIV, AFPA, GSK, MSD, Pfizer and Sanofi.