The 2022 outbreak and the pathobiology of the coxsackie virus [hand foot and mouth disease] in India
Nutan Chavan, Mallika Lavania, Pooja Shinde, Rima R. Sahay, Madhuri A. Joshi, Pragya D. Yadav, Sanjaykumar Tikute, Rishabh Waghchaure, M Ashok, Anjli Gupta, Mahima Mittal, Vikram Khan, Bashir Ahmad Fomda, Muneer Ahmad, Ved Pratap Tiwari, Pralhad Pote, Ashish Ramchandra Dhongade, Aroop Mohanty, Kriti Mohan, Manish Kumar, Anchala Bhardwaj
Abstract
Outbreaks of HFMD in children aged <5 years have been reported worldwide and the major causative agents are Coxsackievirus (CV) A16, enterovirus (EV)-A71 and recently CVA6. In India, HFMD is a disease that is not commonly reported. The purpose of the study was to identify the enterovirus type(s) associated with large outbreak of Hand, foot, and mouth disease during COVID-19 pandemic in 2022. Four hundred and twenty five clinical samples from 196-suspected cases were collected from different parts of the country. This finding indicated the emergence of CVA6 in HFMD along with CVA16, soon after the gradual easing of non-pharmaceutical interventions during-pandemic COVID-19 and the relevance of continued surveillance of circulating enterovirus types in the post-COVID pandemic era.