The challenges posed by the coronavirus throughout the pandemic have been unprecedented in recent times. In order to respond to these challenges NHS hospitals in England were instructed to suspend all non-urgent activity for patients for parts of the 2020-21 reporting period. This may have impacted upon how and the extent to which these types of non-urgent care activities provided that are in scope of the collection during this time. In addition it is possible that behaviours around activities relating to the completion, return and processing of certain data have also been impacted when compared to earlier years data where behaviours and processes related to managing the current pandemic were not in place. Therefore at various points in the pandemic fewer patients presented at A&E than in previous years despite services being open.
A number of actions have had to be taken rapidly in order to address the challenges including the announcement and adherence to national lockdowns at various points throughout 2020-21 period. In this interactive report using ECDS/HES data we seek to explore how weekly variation in the number of A&E attendances have been affected comparing these counts with 2019-20, in England for context.
Charts are available both as a count of attendances and the percentage change between 2019-20 and 2020-21.
They can be filtered by the department type to see how major consultant led attendances differ from minor injury units / walk in centres. There is also the ability to filter on the patient's acuity, used to indicate the acuteness of a patient's condition.
Observations from the interactive report include:
In the first week of April 2020, 9 days after the announcement of the first national lockdown, the daily average number of A&E attendances was 52.3 per cent less than the equivalent week in the previous financial year 21,905. (Source: ECDS 2020-21).
With the exception of March the daily average number of A&E attendances was lower throughout 2020-21 when compared to equivalent week in 2019-20 being more than 25 per cent less of the equivalent 2019-20 period for 21 weeks throughout the year. (Source: ECDS 2020-21)
This interactive report shows how the number of A&E attendances have been affected for the financial year 2020-21, during the COVID-19 pandemic by directly comparing these counts with 2019-20, in England .
Click on the link below to open the report:
Access the report