Pediatric Non-COVID-19 Community-Acquired Pneumonia in COVID-19 Pandemic

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 lockdown strategies were associated with a significant decrease in infectious diseases disseminated through airborne or fecal–oral transmissions. Social distancing and other lockdown strategies effectively slowed down the spread of common respiratory viral diseases and decreased the need for hospitalization among children. Thus, a decline in the incidence of respiratory viral diseases had been reported following the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the trend of non-COVID-19 pneumonia in children remains uncertain. This study aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of non-COVID-19 community-acquired pneumonia in children. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis of all patients (age ≤18 years) presenting with pulmonary infection from January 2019 to December 2020 in a tertiary-level teaching hospital. We compared the number of pediatric patients admitted to our hospital with community-acquired pneumonia from January to December 2020 to those from the same period in 2019. RESULTS: A total of 65 patients were diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia in 2019 and 18 in 2020. The number of patients with community-acquired pneumonia in 2020 was lower than that in 2019 by 47 cases in 2020. The most age distribution of pediatric patients with community-acquired pneumonia was 2–5 years in 2019, indicating the decreasing number of community-acquired pneumonia patients from 36 patients in 2019 to 3 in 2020. CONCLUSION: The number of pediatric with community-acquired pneumonia was lower than in the same period in 2019, which markedly decreased (−72.3%) in 2020. These interventions applied to control the COVID-19 pandemic were effective not only in substantial changes in the seasonal influenza activity but also in decreasing cases of pediatric community-acquired pneumonia.