The impact of Covid-19 pandemic course in the number and severity of hospitalizations for other natural causes in a large urban center in Brazil

Bibliographic Data

ID19594451
AuthorsLuisa Campos Caldeira Brant (0000-0002-7317-1367, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, corresponding author), Pedro Cisalpino Pinheiro (0000-0002-6954-1708, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Ísis Eloah Machado (0000-0002-4678-2074, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto), Paulo Roberto Lopes Corrêa (0000-0002-2302-2179, Prefeitura Municipal de Belo Horizonte), Mayara R Santos (0000-0002-4985-4862, Prefeitura Municipal de Belo Horizonte), Antonio Luiz Pinho Ribeiro (0000-0002-2740-0042, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Unaí Tupinambás (0000-0002-3681-4124, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Christine F Santiago (0000-0003-0703-0926, Prefeitura Municipal de Belo Horizonte), Maria De Fátima Marinho De Souza (0000-0003-3287-9163, Instituto Vital Brazil (Brazil)), Deborah Carvalho Malta (0000-0002-8214-5734, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Valéria Maria De Azeredo Passos (0000-0003-2829-5798, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)
EditorsMathieu Nacher (0000-0001-9397-3204)
Year2021
Volume1
Issue12
Pagese0000054
Publication date2021-12-20
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePLOS Global Public Health (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2767-3375 • E-ISSN: 2767-3375
PublisherPublic Library of Science (PLoS) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1371/journal.pgph.0000054
PMID36962251
OpenAlexW4200597952
LanguageEN
References cited18

The COVID-19 pandemic may indirectly impact hospitalizations for other natural causes. Belo Horizonte is a city with 2.5 million inhabitants in Brazil, one of the most hardly-hit countries by the pandemic, where local authorities monitored hospitalizations daily to guide regulatory measures. In an ecological, time-series study, we investigated how the pandemic impacted the number and severity of public hospitalizations by other natural causes in the city, during 2020. We assessed the number and proportion of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions and in-hospital deaths for all-natural causes, COVID-19, non-COVID-19 natural causes, and four disease groups: infectious, respiratory, cardiovascular, and neoplasms. Observed data from epidemiological week (EW) 9 (first diagnosis of COVID-19) to EW 48, 2020, was compared to the mean for the same EW of 2015–2019 and differences were tested by Wilcoxon rank-sum test. The five-week moving averages of the studied variables in 2020 were compared to that of 2015–2019 to describe the influence of regulatory measures on the indicators. During the studied period, there was 54,722 hospitalizations by non-COVID-19 natural causes, representing a 28% decline compared to the previous five years (p

Disease · Environmental health · Intensive care medicine · Intensive care unit · Mann–Whitney U test · Natural experiment · Pandemic · Public health · Social distance · Wilcoxon signed-rank test · COVID-19 and healthcare impacts · COVID-19 Clinical Research Studies · Demography · Infection Control and Ventilation · Medicine · Emergency Medicine · Epidemiology · Internal Medicine

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