Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the patients reported from respiratory infection disease outbreaks in Chiang Mai Province, 2016–2017

Abstract

Background: Respiratory Infection is an important public health problem in many countries as well as in Thailand. Its incidence can be found in all age groups and the outbreak is usually widespread. In the year 2015, the morbidity rate of influenza of northern region was the second highest rank of the country. Among the provinces of northern region, Chiang Mai province had the highest morbidity rate. The research team then conducted the study of the patients reported from respiratory infection disease outbreaks in Chiang Mai Province during 2016– 2017. The objectives were to identify epidemiological and clinical characteristics, to know the risk factors and to recommend the control measures.
Methods: The descriptive study was conducted by describing the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of respiratory infections group of patients in Chiang Mai province during 2016–2017. We collected data from the event–based surveillance system and the laboratory results of multiplex real–time PCR for respiratory pathogens. We analyzed data by using frequency distribution, percentage and inferential statistics.
Results: Total 72 outbreaks of respiratory infection disease had been reported. We totally found 1,435 patients. The laboratory samples were positive for respiratory pathogens 230 from 270 specimens. The most common pathogen was Influenza A (48.7%). The place that had highest proportion of reported outbreaks was Household/Community (23.61%). The place that had highest average number of patients per event was Military camp ( 49.6 cases/ event) . For the test of association, we found that ‘workplace’ ‘Dormitory/Hotel’ and ‘Military camp’ had significant higher chance of getting infected with Influenza virus when compared with ‘Household/Community’. For clinical characteristic, we found only ‘Fever’ and ‘Fatigue’ that had significantly different between Influenza and other virus cases.
Recommendations: 1) Using ‘Outbreak–occurring place’ Using ‘Outbreak-occurring place’ and ‘the average number of patients per event’ as a classification criteria in order to define the target group for implementing control measures, and 2) ‘Military camp’ and ‘School’ are the places should enhance the surveillance system in order to early detect the outbreak and implement the control measures, 3) ‘workplace’ ‘Dormitory/Hotel’ and ‘Military camp’ are the places that should implement the Influenza prevention program such as washing hand, wearing mask, screening fever, cleaning contact surface and risk communication, etc.