• Anna Slagman, Wilhelm Behringer, Felix Greiner, Matthias Klein, Dirk Weismann, Bernadett Erdmann, Mareen Pigorsch, Martin Möckel, AKTIN Emergency Department Registry, and German Forum of University Emergency Departments (FUN) in the Society of University Clinics of Germany E.V..
• Departments of Emergency and Acute Medicine, Campus Mitte and Virchow-Klinikum Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin
• Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2020 Aug 17; 117 (33-34): 545-552.

BackgroundIn this study, we investigate the number of emergency room consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in Germany compared to figures from the previous year.MethodsCase numbers from calendar weeks 1 through 22 of the two consecutive years 2019 and 2020 were obtained from 29 university hospitals and 7 non-university hospitals in Germany. Information was also obtained on the patients' age, sex, and urgency, along with the type of case (outpatient/inpatient), admitting ward, and a small number of tracer diagnoses (I21, myocardial infarction; J44, COPD; and I61, I63, I64, G45, stroke /TIA), as well as on the number of COVID-19 cases and of tests performed for SARS-CoV-2, as a measure of the number of cases in which COVID-19 was suspected or at least included in the differential diagnoses.ResultsA total of 1 022 007 emergency room consultations were analyzed, of which 546 940 took place in 2019 and 475 067 in 2020. The number of consultations with a positive test for the COVID-19 pathogen was 3122. The total number of emergency room consultations in the observation period was 13% lower in 2020 than in 2019, with a maximum drop by 38% coinciding with the highest number of COVID-19 cases (calendar week 14; 572 cases). After the initiation of interpersonal contact restrictions in 2020, there was a marked drop in COVID-19 case numbers, by a mean of -240 cases per week per emergency room (95% confidence interval [-284; -128]). There was a rise in case numbers thereafter, by a mean of 17 patients per week [14; 19], and the number of cases of myocardial infarction returned fully to the level seen in 2019.ConclusionIn Germany, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant drop in medical emergencies of all kinds presenting to the nation's emergency departments. A recovery effect began to be seen as early as calendar week 15, but the levels seen in 2019 were not yet reached overall by calendar week 22; only the prevalence of myocardial infarction had renormalized by then. The reasons for this require further investigation.

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