IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v19y2022i20p13134-d940286.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

High Non-COVID-19 in-Hospital Deaths during the First Lockdown in Israel Compared with the Second and Third Lockdowns

Author

Listed:
  • Shiran Bord

    (Department of Health Systems Management, The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, Yezreel Valley 1930600, Israel)

  • Aviad Tur-Sinai

    (Department of Health Systems Management, The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, Yezreel Valley 1930600, Israel
    School of Nursing, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY 14642-8404, USA)

  • Fuad Basis

    (Department of Health Systems Management, The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, Yezreel Valley 1930600, Israel
    Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa 3109601, Israel
    Faculty of Medicine, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel)

Abstract

During the first lockdown in Israel, citizens were instructed to visit community clinics only for urgent cases. However, they were not informed that emergency departments (EDs) were safe. Reports from the National Ambulance Services showed a 22% increase in at-home deaths during the lockdown. Perhaps, the reason is because some critically ill patients postponed referrals and came “at the last minute”. After the first lockdown, the Ministry of Health (MOH) declared that hospital EDs were safe. The objective of the study was to examine the rates of admission from EDs to hospital wards, and non-COVID-19 in-hospital deaths during the first lockdown in Israel, compared with the second and third lockdowns. From the business intelligence software of the Rambam Medical Center in Israel, we collected data about the rates of admission to the ED, the non-COVID-19 in-hospital deaths during the three lockdowns, during the same periods in the previous three years, and the main five causes of non-COVID-19 deaths. Data comparison was done using multiple chi-square tests. ED admission numbers were significantly higher during the first lockdown than during the second (χ 2 (1, n = 36,245) = 24.774, p = 0.00001) and third lockdowns (χ 2 (1, n = 36,547) = 8.7808, p = 0.0030). We found a significantly higher number of non-COVID-19 in-hospital deaths vs. discharges during the first lockdown than in the second and third lockdowns (χ 2 (2, n = 26,268) = 7.794, p = 0.0203) The number of deaths due to respiratory diseases was significantly higher during the first lockdown than in the second lockdown (χ 2 (1, n = 572) = 8.8185, p = 0.0029) and in the third lockdown (χ 2 (1, n = 624) = 9.0381, p = 0.0026), and deaths from infectious diseases were higher during the first lockdown than during both the second and third lockdowns (χ 2 (1, n = 566) = 5.9479, p = 0.0147, and χ 2 (1, n = 624) = 9.5978, p = 0.0019), respectively. The onset of CVA and CVD are abrupt, while respiratory and infectious diseases may have an insidious pattern; this may have led patients to postpone referrals to hospitals to the “last minute” during the first lockdown, perhaps due to fears of contracting COVID-19, and as a result of vague instructions. Citizens and policymakers must be made aware of this point during future pandemics.

Suggested Citation

  • Shiran Bord & Aviad Tur-Sinai & Fuad Basis, 2022. "High Non-COVID-19 in-Hospital Deaths during the First Lockdown in Israel Compared with the Second and Third Lockdowns," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-11, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:20:p:13134-:d:940286
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/20/13134/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/20/13134/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vandoros, Sotiris, 2020. "Excess mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic: Early evidence from England and Wales," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laliotis, Ioannis & Minos, Dimitrios, 2022. "Religion, social interactions, and COVID-19 incidence in Western Germany," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    2. Augusto Cerqua & Roberta Di Stefano & Marco Letta & Sara Miccoli, 2021. "Local mortality estimates during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(4), pages 1189-1217, October.
    3. Simone Ghislandi & Raya Muttarak & Markus Sauerberg & Benedetta Scotti, 2022. "Human costs of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the major epicentres in Italy," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 20(1), pages 285-282.
    4. Lorena Barberia & Thomas Plümper & Guy D. Whitten, 2021. "The political science of Covid‐19: An introduction," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2045-2054, September.
    5. Lili Yan Ing & Yessi Vadila, 2022. "COVID-19: Impacts of Indonesia's Trade," Working Papers DP-2021-48, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).
    6. Subhasish Dey & Jessie Davidson, 2021. "The Determinants of Non-COVID-19 Excess Deaths During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-country Panel Study," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 9(2), pages 196-226, December.
    7. Alacevich, Caterina & Cavalli, Nicolò & Giuntella, Osea & Lagravinese, Raffaele & Moscone, Francesco & Nicodemo, Catia, 2020. "Exploring the Relationship between Care Homes and Excess Deaths in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Italy," IZA Discussion Papers 13492, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Theologos Dergiades & Costas Milas & Elias Mossialos & Theodore Panagiotidis, 2021. "Effectiveness of Government Policies in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak," Discussion Paper Series 2021_05, Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, revised Feb 2021.
    9. Sobol, Małgorzata & Blachnio, Agata & Przepiórka, Aneta, 2020. "Time of pandemic: Temporal perspectives related to compliance with public health regulations concerning the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    10. Michael Polemis & Thanasis Stengos, 2022. "Life expectancy during the Covid-19 pandemic: A semi-parametric difference-in-differences analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 360-371.
    11. Aizenman, Joshua & Cukierman, Alex & Jinjarak, Yothin & Nair-Desai, Sameer & Xin, Weining, 2022. "Gaps between official and excess Covid-19 mortality measures: The effects of institutional quality and vaccinations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    12. Caterina Alacevich & Nicolò Cavalli & Osea Giuntella & Raffaele Lagravinese & Francesco Moscone & Catia Nicodemo, 2021. "The presence of care homes and excess deaths during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Evidence from Italy," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1703-1710, July.
    13. Janette Yung & Jiehui Li & Rebecca D. Kehm & James E. Cone & Hilary Parton & Mary Huynh & Mark R. Farfel, 2022. "COVID-19-Specific Mortality among World Trade Center Health Registry Enrollees Who Resided in New York City," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-13, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:20:p:13134-:d:940286. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.