• Carlos Alberto de Oliveira Rocha, Gibson Barros de Almeida Santana, Thiago Cavalcanti Leal, João Paulo Silva de Paiva, Leonardo Feitosa da Silva, Lucas Gomes Santos, Bruno Eduardo Basto Rolim Nunes, Rodrigo Feliciano do Carmo, and Carlos Dornels Freire de Souza.
• Undergraduate Student, Department of Medicine, Center for Studies on Social and Preventive Medicine, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Arapiraca (AL), Brazil.
• Sao Paulo Med J. 2022 Mar 1; 140 (2): 305-309.

BackgroundMeningitis is listed as one of the diseases requiring compulsory notification in Brazil. It can affect all age groups and also has no seasonality. Cases can be recorded in all months of the year and in all states of Brazil. Despite its importance, the obligation of immediate notification may have been compromised by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.ObjectiveTo analyze the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on compulsory notifications of meningitis in Brazil and its states during the first wave of the pandemic.Design And SettingThis was an ecological study involving all confirmed cases of meningitis in Brazil, in its regions and in its states.MethodsData for the months from 2015 to 2020 were obtained from the database of the Notifiable Diseases Information System (Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação, SINAN), in the Department of Informatics of the National Health System (Departamento de Informática do Sistema Único de Saúde, DATASUS). The P-score was used to obtain the percentage change in the numbers of cases reported in 2020.ResultsA 45.7% reduction in notifications of meningitis in Brazil was observed. Regarding the regions and the states, with the exception of Roraima, all of them showed a negative P-score, with decreasing curves each month.ConclusionThe pandemic caused a negative impact on meningitis notifications in Brazil.

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