Impact of lockdowns on paediatric asthma hospital presentations over three waves of COVID-19 pandemic

Public health measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic have altered health care for chronic conditions. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on paediatric asthma, the most common chronic respiratory cause of childhood hospitalisation, in Australia, remains unknown. In a multicentre study, we examined the impact of three waves of COVID-19 on paediatric asthma in New South Wales Australia. Time series analysis was performed to determine trends in asthma hospital presentations in children aged 2–17 years before (2015–2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021) using emergency department and hospital admission datasets from two large tertiary paediatric hospitals. In this first report from Australia, we observed a significant decrease in asthma hospital presentations during lockdown periods including April (68.85%), May (69.46%), December (49.00%) of 2020 and August (66.59%) of 2021 compared to pre-pandemic predictions. The decrease in asthma hospital presentations coincided with the lockdown periods during first, second and third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and was potentially due to reduced transmission of other common respiratory viruses from restricted movement.