Abstract：
Recent outbreaks of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) infections, and their causal linkage with acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), continue to pose a serious public health concern. During 2020 and 2021, the dynamics of EV-D68 and other pathogens have been significantly perturbed by non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19; this perturbation presents a powerful natural experiment for exploring the dynamics of these endemic infections. In this study, we analyzed publicly available data on EV-D68 infections, originally collected through the New Vaccine Surveillance Network, to predict their short- and long-term dynamics following the COVID-19 interventions. Although long-term predictions are sensitive to our assumptions about underlying dynamics and changes in contact rates during the NPI periods, the likelihood of a large outbreak in 2023 appears to be low. Comprehensive surveillance data are needed to accurately characterize future dynamics of EV-D68. The limited incidence of AFM cases in 2022, despite large EV-D68 outbreaks, poses further questions for the timing of the next AFM outbreaks.
摘要：
最近爆发的肠道病毒D68（EV-D68）感染，以及它们与急性弛缓性脊髓炎（AFM）的因果关系，继续构成严重的公共卫生问题。在2020年和2021年期间，针对COVID-19的非药物干预措施显著扰乱了EV-D68和其他病原体的动态；这种扰动为探索这些地方性感染的动态提供了强大的自然实验。在这项研究中,我们分析了EV-D68感染的公开数据，最初是通过新疫苗监测网络收集的，预测其在COVID-19干预后的短期和长期动态。尽管长期预测对我们关于NPI期间潜在动态和接触率变化的假设很敏感，2023年爆发大规模疫情的可能性似乎很低。需要全面的监测数据来准确描述EV-D68的未来动态。2022年AFM病例的发生率有限，尽管有大规模的EV-D68爆发，对下一次AFM爆发的时间提出了进一步的问题。
