Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on emergency asthma admissions and deaths: national interrupted time series analyses for Scotland and Wales.
Thorax
; 76(9): 867-873, 2021 09.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1158122
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on people with asthma is poorly understood. We hypothesised that lockdown restrictions were associated with reductions in severe asthma exacerbations requiring emergency asthma admissions and/or leading to death.METHODS:
Using data from Public Health Scotland and the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank in Wales, we compared weekly counts of emergency admissions and deaths due to asthma over the first 18 weeks in 2020 with the national averages over 2015-2019. We modelled the impact of instigating lockdown on these outcomes using interrupted time-series analysis. Using fixed-effect meta-analysis, we derived pooled estimates of the overall changes in trends across the two nations. We also investigated trends in asthma-related primary care prescribing and emergency department (ED) attendances in Wales.RESULTS:
Lockdown was associated with a 36% pooled reduction in emergency admissions for asthma (incidence rate ratio, IRR 0.64, 95% CI 0.49 to 0.83, p value 0.001) across both countries. There was no significant change in asthma deaths (pooled IRR 0.57, 95% CI 0.17 to 1.94, p value 0.37). ED asthma attendances in Wales declined during lockdown (IRR 0.85, 95% CI 0.73 to 0.99, p value 0.03). A large spike of 121% more inhaled corticosteroids and 133% more oral corticosteroid prescriptions was seen in Wales in the week before lockdown.CONCLUSIONS:
National lockdowns were associated with substantial reductions in severe asthma exacerbations leading to hospital admission across both Scotland and Wales, with no corresponding increase in asthma deaths.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Patient Admission
/
Primary Health Care
/
Asthma
/
Emergency Service, Hospital
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Reviews
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
English
Journal:
Thorax
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Thoraxjnl-2020-216380
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