Höfundar:
Yue Wang, Thor Aspelund, Unnur Valdimarsdóttir
Introduction COVID-19 has caused major disruptions in healthcare services worldwide. Yet little is known about the trends of healthcare disruption within the pandemic develops and its association with social-demographic factors, medical conditions and psychological well-being.
Methods and data We used data from the Icelandic COVID-19 National Resilience Cohort of 15816 individuals 18 years or older who responded to questions on perceived healthcare disruption. We performed both logistic and Possion regression to explore the association between social-demographic factors, medical conditions and perceived healthcare service disruption. We used linear regression to explore the association between duration of perceived healthcare disruption and changes in depression, anxiety, sleep quality, and somatic symptoms.
Results The prevalence of perceived healthcare disruption was slight decreased during the pandemic period, from 12.26% in December 2020 to 10.27% in June 2021. Perceived healthcare disruption was pronounced among young adults who being sexual minorities, with lower income and had pre-existing psychiatry disorders (prevalence rates 15.75% – 16.80%). However, compared to those without COVID-19 diagnosis, no increase prevalence rate was observed among patients with COVID-19 diagnosis (11.74% vs 11.47%, p=0.82). Furthermore, we found later perceived healthcare disruption was positively associated with changes in symptoms of mental illness (βs 0.41 – 0.68).
Conclusions The disruption of healthcare services during the COVID-19 was distinctly reported by vulnerable groups, while the Icelandic healthcare system seems to have managed to maintain accessible services to individuals with COVID-19 diagnosis.