Open AccessStudy of underreporting of cases of meningitis during a Covid-19 pandemic in the state of São Paulo
Author(s) -
Paloma Fernandes de Oliveira,
Matheus Gomes Diniz e Silva,
Daniel Rocha Diniz Teles,
Sabrina de Freitas Barros Soares,
Antônio Fernando Soares Menezes Segundo
Publication year - 2021
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
DOI - 10.5327/1516-3180.034
Subject(s) - meningitis , pandemic , medicine , covid-19 , etiology , epidemiology , cerebrospinal meningitis , population , viral meningitis , bacterial meningitis , pediatrics , environmental health , infectious disease (medical specialty) , disease
In 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought an overload on the health system. This also impacted the care of other diseases such as meningitis. Meningitis is classified into infectious and non-infectious meningitis, and its prognosis changes with the etiology. Objective: To assess notifications of meningitis in São Paulo compared to the country before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: An analytical epidemiological study was carried out, from the DATASUS platform, of meningitis notifications, from 2016 to September 2020 in the state of São Paulo in comparison to the country. Results: In 2020 there was a drop in meningitis notifications in São Paulo regarding the average of cases between 2016-2019, where 1,837 cases were reported in 2020, while the average of 2016-2019 was 6,800 notifications, a decrease of approximately 27%. What was also observed in the country, where in 2020, 4,718 cases were reported compared to the 2016- 2019 average of 16,603 cases, a drop of 28.4%. There was a slight increase in the mortality from meningitis in the state from 6% to 7%. Conclusions: Knowing that there was a significant drop in notifications of cases of meningitis in the state of São Paulo and in the country, we can suspect a correlation with the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, there are some possibilities for this phenomenon: the population with meningitis, for fear of becoming infected, did not seek health services or the overload of health services to monitor patients with COVID-19 led to underreporting of meningitis cases.