Impact of lockdowns on paediatric asthma hospital presentations over three waves of COVID-19 pandemic

Nusrat Homaira; Nan Hu; Louisa Owens; Mei Chan; Melinda Gray; Philip N Britton; Hiran Selvadurai; Raghu Lingam; Adam Jaffe

doi:10.1186/s13223-022-00691-1

Impact of lockdowns on paediatric asthma hospital presentations over three waves of COVID-19 pandemic

Allergy Asthma Clin Immunol. 2022 Jun 16;18(1):53. doi: 10.1186/s13223-022-00691-1.

Authors

Nusrat Homaira^{1

2}, Nan Hu³, Louisa Owens^{3

4}, Mei Chan³, Melinda Gray⁴, Philip N Britton^{5

6

7}, Hiran Selvadurai⁶, Raghu Lingam^#^{3

4}, Adam Jaffe^#^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health, School of Clinical Medicine, UNSW Sydney, Randwick, Australia. n.homaira@unsw.edu.au.
² Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, Australia. n.homaira@unsw.edu.au.
³ Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health, School of Clinical Medicine, UNSW Sydney, Randwick, Australia.
⁴ Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, Australia.
⁵ National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, Westmead, Australia.
⁶ The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Westmead, Australia.
⁷ Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Public health measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic have altered health care for chronic conditions. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on paediatric asthma, the most common chronic respiratory cause of childhood hospitalisation, in Australia, remains unknown. In a multicentre study, we examined the impact of three waves of COVID-19 on paediatric asthma in New South Wales Australia. Time series analysis was performed to determine trends in asthma hospital presentations in children aged 2-17 years before (2015-2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) using emergency department and hospital admission datasets from two large tertiary paediatric hospitals.In this first report from Australia, we observed a significant decrease in asthma hospital presentations during lockdown periods including April (68.85%), May (69.46%), December (49.00%) of 2020 and August (66.59%) of 2021 compared to pre-pandemic predictions.The decrease in asthma hospital presentations coincided with the lockdown periods during first, second and third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and was potentially due to reduced transmission of other common respiratory viruses from restricted movement.

Keywords: COVID-19; Lockdowns; Paediatric asthma.

Publication types

Letter

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding