ArticleCommunications medicine2023
Dynamic zero-COVID policy and healthcare utilization patterns in China during the Shanghai COVID-19 Omicron outbreak.
Article in Communications medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Cost-effectiveness of preventive COVID-19 interventions: a systematic review and network meta-analysis of comparative economic evaluation studies based on real-world data.Journal of global health · 2025Pooled it
- Policy stringency during the COVID-19 pandemic and healthcare services utilization in China: An interrupted time-series analysis.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Antimicrobial resistance trends among dominant pathogens in six clinical departments of the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, 2020-2024.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Changes inMicrobiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Impact of COVID-19 on disease-specific mortality, healthcare resource utilization, and disease burden across a population over 1 billion in 31 countries: an interrupted time-series analysis.EClinicalMedicine · 2025Article
- The Ecology of Medical Care in Shanghai: Temporal Trends and International Comparisons.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2025Article
- Utilization of upper gastrointestinal tumor inpatient services affected by COVID-19 in China 2018-2021: an interrupted time series analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- De ja vu? Post-COVID-19 Surge in Respiratory Illnesses Among Children in China Emphasizes Need for Proactive Surveillance, Openness, Early Detection and Reporting of Causative Pathogen(s), and Their AMR Status.Journal of epidemiology and global health · 2024Article
- Article
- Clinical characteristics and prognostic factors of COVID-19 infection among cancer patients during the December 2022 - February 2023 Omicron variant outbreak.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Article
- Nurses' Work-Family Strategies during COVID-19 Lockdown and Their Association with Individual Health and Family Relations.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundIn April 2022, an outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus Omicron variant in Shanghai precipitated an extensive lockdown. We assessed changes in healthcare utilization during this outbreak and investigated the relationship between the stringency of mitigation strategies and disruptions in healthcare utilization.
methodsUsing provincial-level data from routine health information systems covering all hospitals across Mainland China, we conducted an interrupted time series analysis to examine changes in healthcare utilization during the Shanghai outbreak. Linear regression was used to evaluate the direction and magnitude of the association between the relative changes in the move-out movement index, a proxy for the stringency in population-level mitigation strategies, and the estimated relative changes in healthcare utilization.
resultsOverall, there were 22.9 billion outpatient visits and 1.2 billion discharged inpatients during the study period from January 2016 to May 2022, including 9.1 billion (39.7%) and 0.46 billion (38.2%) in the post-COVID-19 period (January 2020-May 2022), respectively. From March through May 2022, the outbreak resulted in an accumulative loss of 23.5 million (47%) outpatient visits and 0.6 million (55%) discharged inpatients in Shanghai, and a loss of 150.3 million (14%) outpatient visits and 3.6 million (7%) discharged inpatients in other regions. We find that for every 10-percentage point reduction in the relative change of move-out index, a 2.7 (95% CI: 2.0-3.4) percentage point decline in the relative change of outpatient visits, and a 4.3 (95% CI: 3.5-5.2) percentage points decline in the relative change of inpatient discharges.
conclusionsThe Shanghai COVID-19 Omicron outbreak associates with a substantial reduction in outpatient visits and inpatient discharges within Shanghai and other regions in China. The stringency of the COVID-19 lockdown policies associates with more profound reductions in healthcare utilization.
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