Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on use of Pediatric Emergency Health Services in a Tertiary Care Pediatric Hospital in North India

Sodani, R.; Gupta, S.; Kumar, V.

Objective: To compare Pediatric Emergency attendance pre-COVID 19 to that during COVID-19 pandemic and to study changes in patient profiles attending Pediatric Emergency Department during COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional observational study and collected data from Medical Record Section during the COVID-19 pandemic from January to June 2020 and compared it with data from 2019 in similar months. Data collected was analyzed to find out the impact of COVID-19 on use of pediatric emergency health services with respect to patient attendance, age and clinical profile before and during COVID-19 in a tertiary care hospital in New Delhi. Results: We observed a 43% decline in Pediatric Emergency department visits which increased to 75% during the period of lock-down (p value = 0.005). There was a significant decrease in children of age group 1-5 years attending PED. Mortality rate during lockdown had gone up by nearly 3 times than the average monthly mortality. Conclusions: While children might not have been directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the fear of COVID-19 and measures taken to control the pandemic has affected the health seeking behavior of patients to an extent that indirectly caused more damage than anticipated.