Home Care Assistance: Has Covid-19 had an Impact on the Complex Management of HIV Patients?

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people living with HIV (PLWH) could have had to face problems with treatment adherence because of the difficulty of accessing services connected with antiretroviral therapy (ART) dispensation, which could have undermined their health. In this article, we described, over the period 2015-2020, both the activities of our home care assistance unit, the "Unità di Trattamento Domiciliare (UTD)", and the characteristics of the comorbid HIV patients followed-up. To determine whether the COVID-19 pandemic affected this service, we compared the number/type of services provided in 2020 with those provided in the preceding 5 years, i.e., 2015-2019. We also compared the proportion of monthly interventions carried out in 2018, 2019 and 2020. We found comparable values with some differences in the types of performances due to the heterogeneity of the population and their medical assistance needs. We also observed a stable viro-immunological status of the patients. All of these data suggest that the UTD was consistently active during the lockdown months and pandemic waves preventing therapy discontinuation, and was able to maintain optimal control of patients' HIV infections.