Comparison of 19 major infectious diseases during COVID-19 epidemic and previous years in Zhejiang, implications for prevention measures

BACKGROUND: The global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has attracted great public health efforts across the world. Few studies, however, have described the potential impact of these measures on other important infectious diseases. METHODS: The incidence of 19 major infectious diseases in Zhejiang Province was collected from the National Notifiable Infectious Disease Surveillance System from January 2017 to October 2020. The entire epidemic control phase was divided into three stages. The government deployed the first level response from 24 January to 2 March (the most rigorous measures). When the outbreak of COVID-19 was under control, the response level changed to the second level from 3 to 23 March, and then the third level response was implemented after 24 March. We compared the epidemiological characteristics of 19 major infectious diseases during different periods of the COVID-19 epidemic and previous years. RESULTS: A total of 1,814,881 cases of 19 infectious diseases were reported in Zhejiang from January 2017 to October 2020, resulting in an incidence rate of 8088.30 cases per 1,000,000 person-years. After the non-pharmaceutical intervention, the incidence of 19 infectious diseases dropped by 70.84%, from 9436.32 cases per 1,000,000 person-years to 2751.51 cases per 1,000,000 person-years, with the large decrease in the first response period of influenza. However, we observed that the daily incidence of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) and leptospirosis increased slightly (from 1.11 cases per 1,000,000 person-years to 1.82 cases per 1,000,000 person-years for SFTS and 0.30 cases per 1,000,000 person-years to 1.24 cases per 1,000,000 person-years for leptospirosis). There was no significant difference in the distribution of epidemiological characteristic of most infectious diseases before and during the implementation of COVID-19 control measures. CONCLUSION: Our study summarizes the epidemiological characteristics of 19 infectious diseases and indicates that the rigorous control measures for COVID-19 are also effective for majority of infectious diseases. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-022-07301-w.