COVID-19 Wider Impacts - Cardiovascular Activity

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a new strain of coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China. Clinical presentation may range from mild-to-moderate illness to pneumonia or severe acute respiratory infection. The COVID-19 pandemic has wider impacts on individuals’ health, and their use of healthcare services, than those that occur as the direct result of infection. Reasons for this may include:

• Individuals being reluctant to use health services because they do not want to burden the NHS or are anxious about the risk of infection.

• The health service delaying preventative and non-urgent care such as some screening services and planned surgery.

• Other indirect effects of interventions to control COVID-19, such as mental or physical consequences of distancing measures.

This dataset provides information on trend data regarding the wider impact of the pandemic on cardiovascular attendances in A&E departments. Data is available from the beginning of 2020 along with historical activity (average from 2018 and 2019) for comparison purposes. The recent trend data for Accident & Emergency Department attendances are shown by age group, and by broad area deprivation category (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, SIMD).

This data is also available on the COVID-19 Wider Impact Dashboard. Additional data sources relating to this topic area are provided in the Links section of the Metadata below. Information on COVID-19, including stay at home advice for people who are self-isolating and their households, can be found on NHS Inform.

All publications and supporting material to this topic area can be found in the weekly COVID-19 Statistical Report. The date of the next release can be found on our list of forthcoming publications.