Impact of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control measures on the incidence of asthma in children

To study the effect of preventive and control measures of the COVID-19 outbreak on the incidence of childhood asthma. In this study, the total number of monthly outpatient and inpatient visits for childhood asthma in the Second Central Hospital of Baoding City from 2018 to 2021 was collected, and they were divided into two groups according to the period of the visits, namely, before the epidemic outbreak and after the epidemic outbreak. We used the Kolmogorov-Smirnov method to detect the normal distribution of the data and the t-test or Mann-Whitney U-test to compare the changes in the number of cases of childhood asthma before and after the outbreak of the epidemic according to the normal distribution of the data. In addition, since both respiratory infections and air pollution are significant influencing factors for asthma attacks, to clarify the changes in infectious factors and air pollutants, we also compared the changes in common infectious respiratory diseases and common air pollutants using the same statistical methods. During the survival of preventive and control measures for the novel coronavirus outbreak, although the air concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, sulfur dioxide (SO2), and carbon monoxide (CO) showed significant decreases, as well as the number of upper respiratory tract infections, bronchitis, bronchopneumonia, and bronchiolitis, showed a significant decrease from before, there was no change in the number of asthma cases. COVID-19 prevention and control measures led to a reduction in air pollutant concentrations and the incidence of respiratory infectious diseases in children but did not impact the incidence of asthma in children.