{"id":884,"date":"2022-06-08T15:30:59","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T15:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/?p=884"},"modified":"2022-06-08T15:30:59","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T15:30:59","slug":"impact-of-covid-19-on-primary-care-contacts-with-children-and-young-people-in-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2022\/06\/08\/impact-of-covid-19-on-primary-care-contacts-with-children-and-young-people-in-england\/","title":{"rendered":"Impact of COVID-19 on primary care contacts with children and young people in England"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems globally shifted towards treating COVID-19 infection in adults and minimising use of health services for other patients, including children and young people (CYP), who were less susceptible to severe COVID-19. In March 2020, the NHS recommended remote triaging before any face-to-face contact to reduce infection risk.<\/p>\n

The UK Government announced a nationwide lockdown in England from 23 March 2020, and the public was advised to stay at home to limit transmission of COVID-19 and avoid strain on health resources. GPs were asked to prioritise consultations for urgent and serious conditions, and suspend routine appointments for planned or preventive care.<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s access to primary care is highly sensitive to health system changes. We examined the impact of COVID-19 on GP contacts with children and young people (CYP) in England. We used a longitudinal trends analysis was undertaken using electronic health records from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) database.<\/p>\n

GP contacts fell 41% during the first lockdown compared with previous years. Children aged 1\u201314 years had greater falls in total contacts (\u226550%) compared with infants and those aged 15\u201324 years. Face-to-face contacts fell by 88%, with the greatest falls occurring among children aged 1\u201314 years (>90%). Remote contacts more than doubled, increasing most in infants (over 2.5-fold). Total contacts for respiratory illnesses fell by 74% whereas contacts for common non-transmissible conditions shifted largely to remote contacts, mitigating the total fall (31%).<\/p>\n

In conclusion, CYP\u2019s contact with GPs fell, particularly for face-to-face assessments. This may be explained by a lower incidence of respiratory illnesses because of fewer social contacts; changing health-seeking behaviour; or a combination of both. The large shift to remote contacts mitigated total falls in contacts for some age groups and for common non-transmissible conditions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The study can be read in the\u00a0British Journal of General Practice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems globally shifted towards treating COVID-19 infection in adults and minimising use of health services for other patients, including children and young people (CYP), who were less susceptible to severe COVID-19. In March 2020, the NHS recommended remote triaging before any face-to-face contact to reduce infection risk. The UK Government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[209562,274465],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-child-health","tag-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}