Decreased community-acquired pneumonia coincided with rising awareness of precautions before governmental containment policy in Japan.

ABSTRACT: The effectiveness of population-wide compliance to personal precautions (mask-wearing and hand hygiene) in preventing community-acquired pneumonia has been unknown. In Japan, different types of nonpharmaceutical interventions from personal precautions to containment and closure policies (CACPs, e.g. stay-at-home requests) were sequentially introduced from late January to April 2020, allowing for separate analysis of the effects of personal precautions from other more stringent interventions. We quantified the reduction in community-acquired pneumonia hospitalizations and deaths and assessed if it coincided with the timing of increased public awareness of personal precautions before CACPs were implemented. A quasi-experimental interrupted time-series design was applied to non-COVID-19 pneum

SUBMITTER: Tashiro M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10208112 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature