Impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and interventions on hand, foot and mouth disease in Zhengzhou, China, 2014-2022: a retrospective study

Background: Since December 2019, COVID-19 has spread rapidly around the world, and studies have shown that measures to prevent COVID-19 can largely reduce the spread of other infectious diseases. This study explored the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and interventions on the incidence of HFMD.

Methods: We gathered data on the prevalence of HFMD from the Children's Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University. An autoregressive integrated moving average model was constructed using HFMD incidence data from 2014 to 2019, the number of cases predicted from 2020 to 2022 was predicted, and the predicted values were compared with the actual measurements.

Results: From January 2014 to October 2022, the Children's Hospital of Zhengzhou University admitted 103,995 children with HFMD. The average number of cases of HFMD from 2020 to 2022 was 4,946, a significant decrease from 14,859 cases from 2014 to 2019. We confirmed the best ARIMA (2,0,0) (1,1,0)₁₂ model. From 2020 to 2022, the yearly number of cases decreased by 46.58%, 75.54%, and 66.16%, respectively, compared with the forecasted incidence. Trends in incidence across sexes and ages displayed patterns similar to those overall.

Conclusions: The COVID-19 outbreak and interventions reduced the incidence of HFMD compared to that before the outbreak. Strengthening public health interventions remains a priority in the prevention of HFMD.