Impact of national lockdown towards emergency department visits and admission rates during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Thailand: A hospital‐based study

Objective To evaluate the impact of the national lockdown because of the 2019 coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic towards the ED visits and admission rates in Thailand. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the electronic medical database of patients presenting to the ED during the national lockdown perio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emergency Medicine Australasia 2021-04, Vol.33 (2), p.316-323
Main Authors: Wongtanasarasin, Wachira, Srisawang, Thanchanok, Yothiya, Wanwisa, Phinyo, Phichayut
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
admission rate
Adult
Aged
Communicable Disease Control - methods
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID‐19
emergency department
Emergency Service, Hospital - statistics & numerical data
Female
Hospitalization - statistics & numerical data
Humans
Incidence
lockdown
Male
Middle Aged
Pandemics
Retrospective Studies
SARS-CoV-2
Thailand - epidemiology
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Summary:Objective To evaluate the impact of the national lockdown because of the 2019 coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic towards the ED visits and admission rates in Thailand. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the electronic medical database of patients presenting to the ED during the national lockdown period (from 26 March to 30 June 2020). We used the same time interval in the year 2019 as the control period in our analysis. We collected baseline characteristics and outcomes of each patient in the ED. The primary outcome was the incidence rate ratio (IRR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) of the average daily ED visits. Secondary outcomes included the IRR with 95% CI of total admissions and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions. Results The average number of daily ED visits decreased significantly from 89.1 to 57.0 (−36.0%, IRR 0.69, 95% CI 0.67–0.70). However, the proportions of ‘Resuscitation’ and ‘Emergency’ triage level were increased (29.1% vs 19.2%, P 
ISSN:1742-6731
1742-6723
DOI:10.1111/1742-6723.13666