Pneumococcal nasopharyngeal carriage in children under 5 years of age at an outpatient healthcare facility in Novi Sad, Serbia during the COVID-19 pandemic

Revealing the drivers of antibiotic resistance trends inStreptococcus pneumoniaeamidst the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from mathematical modeling

“…However, incorporating a mechanism of reduced risk for developing an IPD due to the absence of circulation of common respiratory viruses led to similar estimates of the relative reduction in IPD incidence as reported in the EU/EEA for 2020 (Brueggemann et al, 2021; European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and World Health Organization, 2022). This finding, coupled with the outcome of other studies that found a generally stable pneumococcal carriage prevalence in healthy individuals, both children and adults, during COVID-19 containment measures (Nation et al, 2023; Petrović et al, 2022; Rybak et al, 2022; Willen et al, 2022; Wyllie et al, 2023), supports the alternative hypothesis. This explanation accounts for the decreased incidence of IPD, rather than attributing it to reduced pneumococcal transmission, which resulted in a significant reduction in carriage according to the simulations (Smith and Opatowski, 2021).…”

“…Similar declines in bacterial disease during early waves of COVID-19 have been observed in the context of sentinel community-acquired infections in New Zealand (Duffy et al, 2021), IPDs in Taiwan (Chien et al, 2021) and Hong Kong (Teng et al, 2022), and lower respiratory tract infections in China (Chen et al, 2021). Yet, surprisingly, a growing number of studies have reported mostly stable pneumococcal carriage throughout the COVID-19 pandemic containment, including among infants in Belgium (Willen et al, 2022), children in Vietnam (Nation et al, 2023), Serbia (Petrović et al, 2022), France (Rybak et al, 2022), South Africa (Olwagen et al, 2023), and Israel (Dagan et al, 2023), adults in Connecticut (Wyllie et al, 2023), and households in Seattle (Bennett et al, 2023). In contrast, a study conducted in Denmark reported a decrease in pneumococcal carriage among older adults during the COVID-19 lockdown (Tinggaard et al, 2023).…”

Impact of COVID-19 Nonpharmaceutical Interventions on Pneumococcal Carriage Prevalence and Density in Vietnam

“…It has been proposed that the reduction in IPD may be due to reduced pneumococcal transmission ( 3 ), but there are limited data to support this. Four studies have examined the impact of NPIs on pneumococcal carriage prevalence, with varying results ( 4 – 7 ). A study in Belgium found no difference in carriage prevalence pre- and postimplementation of NPIs in children attending daycare.…”

“…A study in Belgium found no difference in carriage prevalence pre- and postimplementation of NPIs in children attending daycare. A study in an outpatient health care facility in Serbia found an increase in pneumococcal carriage in children during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the carriage prevalence in the early pandemic period ( 7 ). In contrast, a study in Israel found a reduction in pneumococcal carriage prevalence in one of the two NPI periods assessed, along with a decline in the prevalence of respiratory viruses that was temporally associated with a decline in IPD ( 4 ).…”

Pneumococcal carriage among high-risk adults in a country with nonmandatory pneumococcal vaccination during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that viral infection and bacterial colonization have a synergistic effect [16] , [18] , [34] . However, the magnitude and serotype distribution of pneumococcal carriage observed in this study did not differ between the SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative groups.…”