ArticleDrug and alcohol review2025
Changes in Drug-Induced Hospitalisations and Deaths During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia.
Article in Drug and alcohol review, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Acute health service use among people who died from methamphetamine-related causes in New South Wales and Victoria.BMC health services research · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionWe aimed to determine whether the trend in the rate of drug-induced hospitalisations and deaths changed during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.
methodsData comprised crude monthly rates (per 1,000,000 persons) of hospitalisations and deaths directly attributable to illicit drugs, prescription medicines, or medicines available without a prescription, nationally from 2011 to 2021. Observed rates during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) were compared with their counterfactual forecast in an ARIMA model, overall and disaggregated by sex, age and drug involved.
resultsObserved rates of drug-induced hospitalisation and death, overall and by sex, were not significantly different from the forecasted rates. The rates of drug-induced death among people aged 35-54 and 55+ years were lower than forecasted by 2.1 [95% prediction interval = -3.8, -0.4] and 0.7 [-1.3, -0.1] deaths per 1,000,000 persons per month, respectively. The rates of drug-induced hospitalisation and death involving heroin were lower than forecasted by 1.5 [-2.4, -0.7] and 1.0 [-1.3, -0.6] per 1,000,000 persons per month, respectively, as were those involving amphetamine-type stimulants by 12.4 [-21.4, -0.8] and 0.5 [-0.7, -0.2] per 1,000,000 persons per month, respectively. The rate of cannabinoid-induced hospitalisations was higher than forecasted by 3.8 [0.8, 6.8] hospitalisations per 1,000,000 persons per month. DISCUSSION AND
conclusionsWe found no evidence of an overall difference in the rate of drug-induced harms during the COVID-19 pandemic relative to the forecasted trend. However, there were differences by drug involved, which may be explained by drug market disruptions and changes in drug use during the pandemic.
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