• Jong-Hun Kim, Ha Yan Kim, Myeongjee Lee, Jong Gyun Ahn, Jee Yeon Baek, Min Young Kim, Kyungmin Huh, Jaehun Jung, and Ji-Man Kang.
• Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Suwon, Korea.
• J. Korean Med. Sci. 2022 Aug 29; 37 (34): e258.

BackgroundThis study aimed to investigate whether respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza virus (IFV) infections would occur in 2021-2022 as domestic nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are easing.MethodsData were collected from the Korean Influenza and Respiratory Virus Monitoring System database. The weekly positivity rates of respiratory viruses and number of hospitalizations for acute respiratory infections were evaluated (January 2016-2022). The period from February 2020 to January 2022 was considered the NPI period. The autoregressive integrated moving average model and Poisson analysis were used for data analysis. Data from 14 countries/regions that reported positivity rates of RSV and IFV were also investigated.ResultsCompared with the pre-NPI period, the positivity and hospitalization rates for IFV infection during 2021-2022 significantly decreased to 0.0% and 1.0%, respectively, at 0.0% and 1.2% of the predicted values, respectively. The RSV infection positivity rate in 2021-2022 was 1.8-fold higher than that in the pre-NPI period at 1.5-fold the predicted value. The hospitalization rate for RSV was 20.0% of that in the pre-NPI period at 17.6% of the predicted value. The re-emergence of RSV and IFV infections during 2020-2021 was observed in 13 and 4 countries, respectively.ConclusionDuring 2021-2022, endemic transmission of the RSV, but not IFV, was observed in Korea.© 2022 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences.

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