Association of public health and social measures on the hand-foot-mouth epidemic in South Korea

Abstract

<h3>Background</h3><p>School based-measures such as school closure and school holidays have been considered a viable intervention during the hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) epidemic. The aim of this study was to explore the association of nationwide <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/public-health" title="Learn more about public health from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages">public health</a> and social measures (PHSMs) including planned school vacation on the transmissibility and attack rate of the HFMD epidemic in South Korea.</p><h3>Methods</h3><p>In this study, we used Korean national surveillance data on HFMD from 2014 to 2019 to estimate the temporal changes in HFMD transmissibility (instantaneous reproductive number, ��). Furthermore, to assess the changes in the HFMD attack rate, we used a stochastic transmission model to simulate the HFMD epidemic with no school vacation and nationwide PHSMs in 2015 South Korea.</p><h3>Results</h3><p>We found that school vacations and 2015 PHSMs were associated with the reduced �� by 2–7 % and 13 %, respectively. Model projections indicated school vacations and 2015 PHSMs were associated with reduced HFMD attack rate by an average of 1.10 % (range: 0.38–1.51 %).</p><h3>Conclusions</h3><p>PHSMs likely have a larger association with reduced HFMD transmissibility than school-based measures alone (i.e. school vacations). Preventive measures targeting preschoolers could be considered as potential options for reducing the future burden of HFMD.</p>