Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Professor Sarah O'Brien
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Copyright: © 2020 Hughes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background Rotavirus infection is a common cause of gastroenteritis in children worldwide, with a high mortality burden in developing countries, particularly during the first two years of life. Rotavirus vaccination was introduced into the United Kingdom childhood vaccination schedule in July 2013, with high coverage (>90%) achieved by June 2016. We used an emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance system to assess the impact of the rotavirus vaccination programme, specifically through the demonstration of any immediate and continuing impact on ED gastroenteritis visits in England. Methods This retrospective, observational study used syndromic surveillance data collected from 3 EDs in the two years before (July 2011—June 2013) and 3 years post (July 2013—June 2016) introduction of rotavirus vaccination. The weekly levels of ED visits for gastroenteritis (by age group and in total) during the period before rotavirus vaccination was first described alongside the findings of laboratory surveillance of rotavirus during the same period. An interrupted time-series analysis was then performed to demonstrate the impact of rotavirus vaccination introduction on gastroenteritis ED visit levels. Results During the two years before vaccine introduction ED visits for gastroenteritis in total and for the 0–4 years age group were seen to rise and fall in line with the seasonal rotavirus increases reported by laboratory surveillance. ED gastroenteritis visits by young children were lower in the three years following introduction of rotavirus vaccination (reduced from 8% of visits to 6% of visits). These attendance levels in young children (0-4years) remained higher than in older age groups, however the previously large seasonal increases in children were greatly reduced, from peaks of 16% to 3–10% of ED visits per week. Conclusions ED syndromic surveillance demonstrated a reduction in gastroenteritis visits following rotavirus vaccine introduction. This work establishes ED syndromic surveillance as a platform for rapid impact assessment of future vaccine programmes.
Author(s): Hughes HE, Elliot AJ, Hughes TC, Hungerford D, Morbey RA, Smith GE, Vivancos R, O'Brien SJ
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: PLoS ONE
Year: 2020
Volume: 15
Issue: 10
Online publication date: 08/10/2020
Acceptance date: 18/09/2020
Date deposited: 23/11/2020
ISSN (electronic): 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240021
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240021
PubMed id: 33031389
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
