Paediatric Emergencies During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Main Authors: María Isabel Lázaro Carreño, Ana Barrés Fernández, Diannet Quintero García, Jesús Ferrer Ferrer, Ignacio Fernández González, Lucia Monfort Belenguer, Sergio Iniesta González, Angela Moreno Palomino, Silvia Carbonell Sahuquillo, Francisco José Sebastián Cuevas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2021-02-01
• Series: Global Pediatric Health
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/2333794X21989528

The state of alarm decreed by the Spanish Government, due to the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, has demanded the lockdown of children and has conditioned a new organization of the Emergency Departments (ED). A pre-triage station and 2 independent circuits were established: suspected COVID-19 and not suspected COVID-19 . The ED visits decreased 84,5% from pre-alarm with no increase in the level of urgencies. During the alarm state, 40.97% of the children were classified as suspected COVID-19 . Fever and respiratory symptoms, used as discriminators, generated 2 groups of patients with different characteristics. Although the interruption of sports activities and isolation of children at home contributed to the decrease in emergencies, it was also probably conditioned by adults’ fear of contagion, who avoided going to the hospital in situations that would never have really required ED and resolved themselves in primary care or spontaneously.