Temporal Variations and Spatial Clusters of Dengue in Thailand: Longitudinal Study before and during the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic

Abstract

The efforts towards effective control of the COVID-19 pandemic may affect the incidence of dengue. This study aimed to investigate temporal variations and spatial clusters of dengue in Thailand before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reported dengue cases before (2011–2019) and during (2020–2021) the COVID-19 pandemic were obtained from the national disease surveillance datasets. The temporal variations were analyzed using graphics, a seasonal trend decomposition procedure based on Loess, and Poisson regression. A seasonal ARIMA model was used to forecast dengue cases. Spatial clusters were investigated using the local indicators of spatial associations (LISA). The cyclic pattern showed that the greatest peak of dengue cases likely changed from every other year to every two or three years. In terms of seasonality, a notable peak was observed in June before the pandemic, which was delayed by one month (July) during the pandemic. The trend for 2011–2021 was relatively stable but dengue incidence decreased dramatically by 7.05% and 157.80% on average in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The forecasted cases in 2020 were slightly lower than the reported cases (2.63% difference), whereas the forecasted cases in 2021 were much higher than the actual cases (163.19% difference). The LISA map indicated 5 to 13 risk areas or hotspots of dengue before the COVID-19 pandemic compared to only 1 risk area during the pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, dengue incidence sharply decreased and was lower than forecasted, and the spatial clusters were much lower than before the pandemic.