Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Admissions to the Pediatric Emergency Department in a Tertiary Care Hospital
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SCIENTIFIC LETTER
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Admissions to the Pediatric Emergency Department in a Tertiary Care Hospital Radhika Raman 1 & Manoj Madhusudan 1 Received: 5 September 2020 / Accepted: 12 October 2020 # Dr. K C Chaudhuri Foundation 2020
To the Editor: The management of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has centered around the implementation of lockdown and advisories to the general public to stay at home. Though this was an effective strategy to slow the spread of the virus, the anxiety among parents, and the restrictions on travel imposed have influenced the demographic characteristics of hospital admissions. We hence attempted to compare children based on symptomatology at presentation to the pediatric emergency department during the pandemic phase (April–July 2020) with the same period in 2019. We observed a 65% drop in admission to the pediatric emergency department in 2020 (n = 280) as compared with a similar time frame last year (n = 790). The most significant decrease was observed in admissions due to respiratory [n = 109 (13.7%) to n = 24 (8.5%) p value-0.023] and gastrointestinal [n = 153 (19.3%) to n = 31 (11.1%) p value-0.002] emergencies. We also observed that a significantly higher proportion of children admitted into the emergency department required ICU care [n = 56 (20%) in 2020 to n = 76 (9.6%) in 2019 p value
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