Prevalence of acute bronchiolitis during COVID-19 era: an observational study of a tertiary center

Background Recent application of unrivaled public health measures for COVID-19 pandemic could have significant implications on other infectious diseases. Objectives We aim to detect the influence of the recently applied health measures on acute bronchiolitis-associated hospitalizations. Methods We analyzed patients' electronic records at our tertiary hospital to obtain data of hospitalized patients with acute bronchiolitis for the period between November 1, 2017, to February 28, 2021. We compared the frequencies of hospitalizations in the peak respiratory syncytial virus epidemic months (November-February) in 2020 with those in 2017-19. Results There were 16,466 all-cause hospitalizations during the period (November-February) from 2017 to 2021. We observed significant lower frequencies of acute bronchiolitis-associated hospitalizations in 2020/2021 compared with 2019/2020, 2018/2019, and 2017/2018 (0.6% vs. 8.2%, 7.4%, and 9.9%, respectively) (P