279010

An outbreak of upper respiratory tract infections in young children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a lesson from Hong Kong

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Infectious Diseases

Abstract

The pandemic of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (COVID-19) has brought enormous challenges to children at schools worldwide. In early 2020, COVID-19 pandemic forced the Hong Kong government to lock down all the kindergartens and primary schools in Hong Kong district. The young children have to stay at home for online courses, enhancing the family burden to care for them as well as decreasing their social activities. Up to the early spring semester of 2020, COVID-19 pandemic has eased in Hong Kong. All the online courses returned to normal face-to-face classes. The children in all the kindergartens and primary schools were required to wear face masks back to their schools. However, outbreaks of upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) were recently reported in the wearing masks of young children in Hong Kong kindergarten and primary schools. Even though these children with URTI were not found to have caught COVID-19, the government considering the pressures from the COVID-19 crisis and winter flu season declared that Hong Kong kindergartens were closed and all the face-to-face lessons from the first grade to the third grade were stopped in the primary schools for two weeks. (To be continued)...

DOI

10.21608/mid.2023.183794.1436

Keywords

upper respiratory tract infections, Young Children, COVID-19 pandemic

Authors

First Name

Chuanshan

Last Name

Xu

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Key Laboratory of Molecular Target and Clinical Pharmacology, State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Fifth Affiliated Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 511436, China

Email

xcshan@163.com

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Siu Kan

Last Name

Law

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Faculty of Science and Technology, The Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong, Tsing Yi, New Territories, Hong Kong

Email

siukanlaw@hotmail.com

City

-

Orcid

0000-0002-0454-2048

First Name

Albert Wingnang

Last Name

Leung

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong

Email

albertleung@ln.edu.hk

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

4

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

39092

Issue Date

2023-02-01

Receive Date

2022-12-27

Publish Date

2023-02-01

Page Start

3

Page End

4

Print ISSN

2682-4132

Online ISSN

2682-4140

Link

https://mid.journals.ekb.eg/article_279010.html

Detail API

https://mid.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=279010

Order

2

Type

Letter to the Editor

Type Code

1,165

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Microbes and Infectious Diseases

Publication Link

https://mid.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

An outbreak of upper respiratory tract infections in young children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a lesson from Hong Kong

Details

Type

Article

Created At

25 Dec 2024