A qualitative study of COVID-19 related reasons for delayed presentation of patients with chest pain during the COVID-19 pandemic

INTRODUCTION: In previous pandemics such as the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, it has been observed that patients with non-pandemic related complaints, delay their presentation to hospital. Similarly, delayed presentation of patients with chest pain during the COVID-19 pandemic has been documented. This qualitative study identified the COVID-19 related reasons which lead to this delay. METHODS: A qualitative study based on 10 individual patient interviews. Half of these were conducted at a public hospital emergency centre (EC) and the other half at a private EC. RESULTS: A variety of psychosocial factors were identified as themes for delayed presentation. Interestingly, the fear of contracting COVID-19 at the hospital was not found to be an important theme in our study. Rather, confusion around hospital protocols during the pandemic was identified as a recurrent theme. DISCUSSION: This study found that confusion about COVID-19 hospital protocols was the major pandemic related delaying factor. A number of themes unrelated to COVID-19 were also identified.