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The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education
Soon after SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019, Belgium was confronted with a first COVID-19 wave in March-April 2020. SARS-CoV-2 circulation declined in the summer months (late May to early July 2020). Following a successfully trumped late July-August peak, COVID-19 incidence fell slightly, to then ent...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8880857/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35213651 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264516 |
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author | Natalia, Yessika Adelwin Faes, Christel Neyens, Thomas Molenberghs, Geert |
author_facet | Natalia, Yessika Adelwin Faes, Christel Neyens, Thomas Molenberghs, Geert |
author_sort | Natalia, Yessika Adelwin |
collection | PubMed |
description | Soon after SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019, Belgium was confronted with a first COVID-19 wave in March-April 2020. SARS-CoV-2 circulation declined in the summer months (late May to early July 2020). Following a successfully trumped late July-August peak, COVID-19 incidence fell slightly, to then enter two successive phases of rapid incline: in the first half of September, and then again in October 2020. The first of these coincided with the peak period of returning summer travelers; the second one coincided with the start of higher education’s academic year. The largest observed COVID-19 incidence occurred in the period 16–31 October, particularly in the Walloon Region, the southern, French-speaking part of Belgium. We examine the potential association of the higher education population with spatio-temporal spread of COVID-19, using Bayesian spatial Poisson models for confirmed test cases, accounting for socio-demographic heterogeneity in the population. We find a significant association between the number of COVID-19 cases in the age groups 18–29 years and 30–39 years and the size of the higher education student population at the municipality level. These results can be useful towards COVID-19 mitigation strategies, particularly in areas where virus transmission from higher education students into the broader community could exacerbate morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 among populations with prevalent underlying conditions associated with more severe outcomes following infection. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8880857 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-88808572022-02-26 The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education Natalia, Yessika Adelwin Faes, Christel Neyens, Thomas Molenberghs, Geert PLoS One Research Article Soon after SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019, Belgium was confronted with a first COVID-19 wave in March-April 2020. SARS-CoV-2 circulation declined in the summer months (late May to early July 2020). Following a successfully trumped late July-August peak, COVID-19 incidence fell slightly, to then enter two successive phases of rapid incline: in the first half of September, and then again in October 2020. The first of these coincided with the peak period of returning summer travelers; the second one coincided with the start of higher education’s academic year. The largest observed COVID-19 incidence occurred in the period 16–31 October, particularly in the Walloon Region, the southern, French-speaking part of Belgium. We examine the potential association of the higher education population with spatio-temporal spread of COVID-19, using Bayesian spatial Poisson models for confirmed test cases, accounting for socio-demographic heterogeneity in the population. We find a significant association between the number of COVID-19 cases in the age groups 18–29 years and 30–39 years and the size of the higher education student population at the municipality level. These results can be useful towards COVID-19 mitigation strategies, particularly in areas where virus transmission from higher education students into the broader community could exacerbate morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 among populations with prevalent underlying conditions associated with more severe outcomes following infection. Public Library of Science 2022-02-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8880857/ /pubmed/35213651 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264516 Text en © 2022 Natalia et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Natalia, Yessika Adelwin Faes, Christel Neyens, Thomas Molenberghs, Geert The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education |
title | The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education |
title_full | The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education |
title_fullStr | The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education |
title_full_unstemmed | The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education |
title_short | The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education |
title_sort | covid-19 wave in belgium during the fall of 2020 and its association with higher education |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8880857/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35213651 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264516 |
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