
While the COVID-19 pandemic changed many aspects of life around the world, incidents of other respiratory and infectious diseases were not impacted by the global event.
A study from Epic Research found that among patients aged 18 to 50, the prevalence of asthma, COPD, pneumonia, shingles, influenza and pancreatitis did not increase in 2023 compared to 2019. All participants had a face-to-face encounter with their health care provider in 2019 or 2023. If a patient had multiple encounters in one year, a random encounter was selected.
The diseases were grouped into three categories for analysis: respiratory diseases (asthma, pneumonia and COPD), infectious diseases (strep throat, shingles, sepsis and influenza) and gastrointestinal (GI) tract diseases (gastritis and pancreatitis).
The researchers found that rates of respiratory diseases have actually decreased. Asthma showed the biggest drop, falling from 7.84% in 2019 to 7.00% in 2023. COPD, meanwhile, fell from 0.44% to 0.32%, and pneumonia dropped from 0.31% to 0.21%.
Among infectious diseases, researchers found an increase in strep throat, rising from 0.63% in 2019 to 0.85% in 2023. The rates for shingles, sepsis and influenza were largely unchanged.