Asthma attacks seen in primary care halved in England during pandemic, study finds

GPs in England saw patient consultations for asthma exacerbations halve during the UK’s first lockdown, a study has found,1 although the number of people needing hospital treatment remained the same.

Researchers used the Optimum Patient Care database, which collates medical records from general practices from around the UK, to study exacerbations among over 100 000 patients in England who had at least one such event from January 2016 to August 2020. During that time there were 278 996 exacerbations, most of which (229 058; 82%) were managed in primary care.

The researchers compared the exacerbation rate in two distinct periods of the five years studied—weeks 1 to 12 and weeks 13 to 32, which in 2020 was after lockdown was imposed on 23 March. They found that from March to August 2020 there was a significant …