Trends in intensive neonatal care during the COVID-19 outbreak in Japan
- PMID: 33229330
- DOI: 10.1136/archdischild-2020-320521
Trends in intensive neonatal care during the COVID-19 outbreak in Japan
Erratum in
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Correction: Trends in intensive neonatal care during the COVID-19 outbreak in Japan.Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2021 Jul;106(4):e3. doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2020-320521corr1. Epub 2021 May 27. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2021. PMID: 34045284 No abstract available.
Abstract
The reduction in the use of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) during the COVID-19 outbreak has been reported, but whether this phenomenon is widespread across countries is unclear. Using a large-scale inpatient database in Japan, we analysed the intensive neonatal care volume and the number of preterm births for weeks 10-17 vs weeks 2-9 (during and before the outbreak) of 2020 with adjustment for the trends during the same period of 2019. We found statistically significant reductions in the numbers of NICU admissions (adjusted incidence rate ratio (aIRR), 0.76; 95% CI, 0.65 to 0.89) and neonatal resuscitations (aIRR, 0.37; 95% CI, 0.25 to 0.55) during the COVID-19 outbreak. Along with the decrease in the intensive neonatal care volume, preterm births before 34 gestational weeks (aIRR, 0.71) and between 34 0/7 and 36 6/7 gestational weeks (aIRR, 0.85) also showed a significant reduction. Further studies about the mechanism of this phenomenon are warranted.
Keywords: epidemiology; health services research; neonatology.
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.
Conflict of interest statement
Competing interests: MN is one of the board of directors in Medical Data Vision and received a personal salary from it outside of this study. HN supported Medical Data Vision in algorithm construction and received personal fee outside this study.
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