From March 2020 much of the world is fighting against SARSCOV2.
The economically stronger and more technological countries have put their full potential into the field by carrying out massive tests of the population, methodical contact tracking and case isolation.
In addition to these measures specifically aimed at blocking SARSCOV2, non-specific measures have been applied, with the aim of hindering the spread of respiratory infections: social distancing, intensification of hygiene standards, flanked by the use of masks.
These measures precisely because they are apparently simple have often been underestimated. Many have denied their effectiveness, preferring to call into question other more or less scientific justifications.
After months of pandemic, one may wonder what happened to other infectious diseases.
Unfortunately, there are not many states that publish data on the surveillance of infectious diseases and, especially, many respiratory diseases are more frequent in the cold period.
Thankfully Australia offers the solution to both problems: publishes a lot of data on the health surveillance of infectious diseases (http://www9.health.gov.au/cda/source/cda-index.cfm) and now there it's full winter.
Thankfully Australia offers the solution to both problems: publishes a lot of data on the health surveillance of infectious diseases (http://www9.health.gov.au/cda/source/cda-index.cfm) and now there it's full winter.
Influence in Australia
So let's look at the graph that summarizes the evolution of seasonal influence … №, surveillance didn't stop in April, has continued and continues to this day but cases of flu have collapsed since March!
If we look at the graph comparing the trend of influence in Australia over the years, we see that they have a flu peak from May to October but not this year! The graph seems to go almost to zero.
Other infectious diseases?
Other diseases such as mumps, Whooping cough, rotavirus and pneumococcal infections since April 2020 they see a collapse.
Curious how even a oro-fecal transmission virus such as rotavirus has been brought down by distancing and hygiene measures.
It only happens in Australia?
Probably not, the collapse of the flu is occurring in all countries where social distancing is respected and where hygiene standards are being stepped up (https://www.who.int/influenza/surveillance_monitoring/updates/latest_update_GIP_surveillance/en/)
On this page https://syndromictrends.com/metric/panel/rp/percent_positivity/organism/main infectious pathogens found by US laboratories adjoining the “BioFire's data aggregating program”.
The chart speaks for itself: since April all infections have collapsed. Collapse is greater for respiratory infections but is also appreciable for gastroenteric infections.
Many colleagues are worried about how to distinguish mild symptoms from COVID, symptoms of seasonal flu and other mundane respiratory pathogens.
If hygiene rules and distancing continue to be implemented, it is possible that even in Italy there will be a collapse of non-COVID respiratory infections: in the presence of respiratory or flu symptoms the probability of being faced with a simple cold or seasonal flu will be much lower and the patient should be treated as COVID until proven otherwise (tampons at all and immediately to break the chain of infections).
