Early impact of school closure and social distancing for COVID-19 on the number of inpatients with childhood non-COVID-19 acute infections in Japan

  1. Kenji Kishimoto
  2. Seiko Bun
  3. Jung-ho Shin
  4. Daisuke Takada
  5. Tetsuji Morishita
  6. Susumu Kunisawa
  7. Yuichi Imanaka

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Abstract

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  1. Version published to 10.1007/s00431-021-04043-w
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.18.20233957: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University (approval number: R0135), and conducted in accordance with the Ethical Guidelines for Medical and Health Research Involving Human Subjects of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All analyses were conducted using R version 4.0.2 (The R Development Core Team, Vienna, Austria).
    R Development Core
    suggested: (R Project for Statistical Computing, RRID:SCR_001905)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This study has several limitations. The study population, which was restricted to a certain segment of hospitals in the QIP, is perhaps the primary limitation. The movement of patients from the enrolled hospitals to other facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic may have caused an overestimation of the reduction in the number of inpatients in the post-school-closure period. However, a relatively consistent trend in the number of inpatients in the influenza and UTI groups during the study period suggests that there was no large-scale movement of patients from the enrolled hospitals. A lack of information on disease severity is another limitation of the study. Changes in disease severity in the enrolled patients between the two periods were not assessed, as the DPC data are not sufficient to evaluate the severity of a childhood infectious disease. A third limitation is that the study included only the Japanese population. It should be noted that no mandatory social distancing or so-called lockdowns were imposed by the Japanese government. As there have been considerable regional differences in the spread of COVID-19 and in the various epidemic-control measures taken globally, it is difficult to predict whether the present findings for Japan are applicable elsewhere. Despite these limitations, our study provides novel information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health care for children. In summary, we confirmed a marked reduction in the number of school-age and pre-scho...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.18.20233957v1 on medRxiv