Impact of Covid 19 preventive measures on hospital admission due to respiratory illness in children at Professorial Paediatric unit Teaching Hospital Jaffna

Abstract

Respiratory diseases are common causes of hospital admission in children. Droplet transmission is the primary route of transmition in respiratory infections. The objective was to assess the burden of respiratory diseases on hospital admission of children during this Covid 19 pandemic and to assess the impact of Covid 19 preventive measures on it. An institutional based retrospective descriptive study based on secondary data was carried out at Professorial Paediatric unit Teaching hospital Jaffna. The data was extracted from the electronic patient management system. All the records of children who were primarily diagnosed with respiratory disease during the period of June 2020 to May 2021 were extracted. This data was compared with that of 2017. The total hospital admission has reduced from 4127 to 1049 during the pandemic. There was a significant decrease in total hospital admission during the covid 19 pandemic compared to before the pandemic {t (11.488) = 8.015 p<0.001}. Similarly, there was a significance decrease in the admissions due to respiratory diseases during the covid 19 pandemic {t(11.355) =5.982 p<0.001}. The percentage of respiratory admission has significantly reduced during the pandemic {t (21.997) =5.173 p<0.001}. Hospital admission due to respiratory illness has significantly reduced when compared to total admission during this pandemic. This may be attributed to social distancing, wearing mask and good hand hygiene.