Citation

Zhu W, Yang J, Xu L, Fang S. Am. J. Emerg. Med. 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of emergency, Affiliated Anhui Provincial Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230001, People's Republic of China; Department of emergency, the First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230001, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: fangshiyuan2008@126.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ajem.2020.03.027

PMID

32222316

Abstract

The incidence and mortality rate of traffic injury is usually high in China [1]. Due to the large human migration and traffic vehicle employment, Spring Festival transportation rush tends to lead to increased numbers of traumatic injuries, which puts a burden on the emergency trauma centers. Approximately 2.99 billion person-time trips were predicted as part of the Spring Festival transportation of 2020 by the state transport ministry, which is 0.8% higher than last year. However, a plunge in traumatic injury rates compared to the past 5 years has been observed in our provincial emergency medicine orthopedic center. This plunge may be attributed to the outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan and the consequent nationwide traffic control since 23 January 2020, the day happens to be the Spring Festival this year [2].

We retrospectively described the medical treatment situation in the emergency center of our hospital over the past 5 years during the Spring Festival holiday (7 days before and 7 days after the Spring Festival). A 40% decrease in the number of total patients was found this year. While in the first half of this year's transportation season, the average daily number of patients (47.8) was slightly higher than the number of patients during the same period in previous years (45.9 from year 2014–2019), the major turning point was noted on 24 Jan 2020 when the average daily number of patients dropped to 17.7. We compared the distribution of patients during the week after the Spring Festival to that in previous years (Table 1). Although a plunge in traffic injury and traumatic injury was detected this year, the numbers for chronic arthralgia, backache, open hand injury, and joint dislocation were similar to those in previous years. The number of patients presenting due to a motor vehicle collision, falls, transferring injuries, joint dislocations, and acute ankle injuries substantially decreased ...


Keywords: CoViD-19-Road-Traffic

Language: en