The COVID-19 wave in Belgium during the Fall of 2020 and its association with higher education.
Soon after SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019, Belgium was confronted with a first COVID-19 wave in March-April 2020. SARS-CoV-2 circulation declined in the summer months (late May to early July 2020). Following a successfully trumped late July-August peak, COVID-19 incidence fell slightly, to then enter two successive phases of rapid incline: in the first half of September, and then again in October 2020. The first of these coincided with the peak period of returning summer travelers; the second one coincided with the start of higher education's academic year. The largest observed COVID-19 incid... Mehr ...
Verfasser: | |
---|---|
Dokumenttyp: | Artikel |
Erscheinungsdatum: | 2022 |
Reihe/Periodikum: | PLoS ONE, Vol 17, Iss 2, p e0264516 (2022) |
Verlag/Hrsg.: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
|
Schlagwörter: | Medicine / R / Science / Q |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Permalink: | https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27003961 |
Datenquelle: | BASE; Originalkatalog |
Powered By: | BASE |
Link(s) : | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264516 |
Soon after SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019, Belgium was confronted with a first COVID-19 wave in March-April 2020. SARS-CoV-2 circulation declined in the summer months (late May to early July 2020). Following a successfully trumped late July-August peak, COVID-19 incidence fell slightly, to then enter two successive phases of rapid incline: in the first half of September, and then again in October 2020. The first of these coincided with the peak period of returning summer travelers; the second one coincided with the start of higher education's academic year. The largest observed COVID-19 incidence occurred in the period 16-31 October, particularly in the Walloon Region, the southern, French-speaking part of Belgium. We examine the potential association of the higher education population with spatio-temporal spread of COVID-19, using Bayesian spatial Poisson models for confirmed test cases, accounting for socio-demographic heterogeneity in the population. We find a significant association between the number of COVID-19 cases in the age groups 18-29 years and 30-39 years and the size of the higher education student population at the municipality level. These results can be useful towards COVID-19 mitigation strategies, particularly in areas where virus transmission from higher education students into the broader community could exacerbate morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 among populations with prevalent underlying conditions associated with more severe outcomes following infection.