ArticleHealth policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands)2021
Accessibility to SARS-CoV-2 swab test during the Covid-19 pandemic: Did age make the difference?
Article in Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Italy Using Real-World Data: Methodology and Cohort Description of the Second Phase of Web-Based EPICOVID19 Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Trial
- Socio-economic inequalities in access to COVID-19 tests in France in 2020: evidence from the EPICOV socio-epidemiological cohort.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Multimorbidity and SARS-CoV-2-Related Outcomes: Analysis of a Cohort of Italian Patients.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Article
- Health trajectories in older patients hospitalized for COVID-19: Results from the GeroCovid multicenter study.Respiratory medicine · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although COVID-19 affects older people more severely, health policies during the first wave of the pandemic often prioritized younger individuals. We investigated whether age had influenced the access to a diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2 infection and whether clinical complexity and healthcare resources availability could have impacted such differences. This work included 126,741 Italian participants in the EPICOVID19 web-based survey, who reported having had contacts with known/suspected COVID-19 cases (epidemiological criterion) and/or COVID-19-like signs/symptoms (clinical criterion) from February to June 2020. Data on sociodemographic, medical history and access to SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) were collected. Logistic regressions estimated the probability of accessing NPS as a function of age and the possible modifying effect of chronic diseases' number and residential areas in such association. A total of 6136 (4.8%) participants had undergone an NPS. Older participants had lower NPS frequencies than the younger ones when reporting epidemiological (14.9% vs. 8.8%) or both epidemiological and clinical criteria (17.5% vs. 13.7%). After adjustment for potential confounders, including epidemiological and clinical criteria, the chance of NPS access decreased by 29% (OR=0.71, 95%CI:0.63-0.79) in older vs. younger individuals. Such disparity was accentuated in areas with greater healthcare resources. In conclusion, in the first wave of the pandemic, age may have affected the access to COVID-19 diagnostic testing, disadvantaging older people.
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