The impact of COVID-19 and national pandemic responses on health service utilisation in seven low- and middle-income countries.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted health services worldwide, which may have led to increased mortality and secondary disease outbreaks. Disruptions vary by patient population, geographic area, and service. While many reasons have been put forward to explain disruptions, few studies have empirically investigated their causes. OBJECTIVE: We quantify disruptions to outpatient services, facility-based deliveries, and family planning in seven low- and middle-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and quantify relationships between disruptions and the intensity of national pandemic responses. METHODS: We leveraged routine data from 104 Partners In Health-supported facilities from January 2016 to December 2021. We first quantified COVID-19-related disruptions in each country by month using negative binomial time series models. We then modelled the relationship between disruptions and the intensity of national pandemic responses, as measured by the stringency index from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. RESULTS: For all the studied countries, we observed at least one month with a significant decline in outpatient visits during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also observed significant cumulative drops in outpatient visits across all months in Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. A significant cumulative decrease in facility-based deliveries was observed in Haiti, Lesotho, Mexico, and Sierra Leone. No country had significant cumulative drops in family planning visits. For a 10-unit increase in the average monthly stringency index, the proportion deviation in monthly facility outpatient visits compared to expected fell by 3.9% (95% CI: -5.1%, -1.6%). No relationship between stringency of pandemic responses and utilisation was observed for facility-based deliveries or family planning. CONCLUSIONS: Context-specific strategies show the ability of health systems to sustain essential health services during the pandemic. The link between pandemic responses and healthcare utilisation can inform purposeful strategies to ensure communities have access to care and provide lessons for promoting the utilisation of health services elsewhere.

Adapting Lot Quality Assurance Sampling to accommodate imperfect diagnostic tests: application to COVID-19 serosurveillance in Haiti.

BACKGROUND: Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS), a tool used for monitoring health indicators in low resource settings resulting in "high" or "low" classifications, assumes that determination of the trait of interest is perfect. This is often not true for diagnostic tests, with imperfect sensitivity and specificity. Here, we develop Lot Quality Assurance Sampling for Imperfect Tests (LQAS-IMP) to address this issue and apply it to a COVID-19 serosurveillance study design in Haiti. METHODS: We first derive a modified procedure, LQAS-IMP, that accounts for the sensitivity and specificity of a diagnostic test to yield correct classification errors. We then apply the novel LQAS-IMP to design an LQAS system to classify prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies among healthcare workers at eleven Zanmia Lasante health facilities in Haiti. Finally, we show the performance of the LQAS-IMP procedure in a simulation study. RESULTS: We found that when an imperfect diagnostic test is used, the classification errors in the standard LQAS procedure are larger than specified. In the modified LQAS-IMP procedure, classification errors are consistent with the specified maximum classification error. We then utilized the LQAS-IMP procedure to define valid systems for sampling at eleven hospitals in Haiti. CONCLUSION: The LQAS-IMP procedure accounts for imperfect sensitivity and specificity in system design; if the accuracy of a test is known, the use of LQAS-IMP extends LQAS to applications for indicators that are based on laboratory tests, such as SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.

Childhood immunization during the COVID-19 pandemic: experiences in Haiti, Lesotho, Liberia and Malawi.

OBJECTIVE: To examine changes in vaccination of children younger than 1 year during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (March 2020-August 2021) in Haiti, Lesotho, Liberia and Malawi. METHODS: We used data from health management information systems on vaccination of children aged 12 months or younger in districts supported by Partners In Health. We used data from January 2016 to February 2020 and a linear model with negative binomial distribution to estimate the expected immunization counts for March 2020-August 2021 with 95% prediction intervals, assuming no pandemic. We compared these expected levels with observed values and estimated the immunization deficits or excesses during the pandemic months. FINDINGS: Baseline vaccination counts varied substantially by country, with Lesotho having the lowest count and Haiti the highest. We observed declines in vaccination administration early in the COVID-19 pandemic in Haiti, Lesotho and Liberia. Continued declines largely corresponded to high rates of COVID-19 infection and discrete stock-outs. By August 2021, vaccination levels had returned to close to or above expected levels in Haiti, Liberia and Lesotho; in Malawi levels remained below expected. CONCLUSION: Patterns of childhood immunization coverage varied by country over the course of the pandemic, with significantly lower than expected vaccination levels seen in one country during subsequent COVID-19 waves. Governments and health-care stakeholders should monitor vaccine coverage closely and consider interventions, such as community outreach, to avoid or combat the disruptions in childhood vaccination.