Additional considerations for assessing COVID-19 impact on dengue transmission

ABSTRACT

This article reported an astounding drop in dengue risk in 2020 attributable to public health and social measures during the pandemic. Taking population immunity into account, this study acknowledged how the unprecedented dengue burden of 2019 might have driven high immunity to dengue in 2020. This study also mentioned idiosyncrasies in the model that could not be explained. Moreover, it also adds possible considerations of (1) administrative delays and (2) genotype-replacement events driving the 2019 epidemics affecting conclusions drawn from the model. Therefore, the greatest dengue year on record in 2019, in terms of incidence, be treated as unique in that it was probably fuelled by viral evolutionary events resulting in genotype replacements and might falsely augment the differential dengue virus burden between a higher-than-usual 6-year mean dengue incidence (inclusive of 2019) versus the comparison year of 2020. From an academic standpoint, this study would be curious to see how the model would perform if the outlier year of 2019 were removed.