Measures to manage COVID-19 (for example, stay-at-home orders and selected service closures or suspensions) resulted in changes to health service use for people with CKD.
Organ donation numbers and transplants have declined since 2019, as a result of the pandemic (OTA, 2021). Pauses in kidney transplant surgery particularly affect CKD, as more than half of transplanted organs are kidneys. In 2020, there was an 18% decrease in the number of kidney transplants from deceased donors compared to 2019, and 2021 saw a decrease of 7% compared with 2020. There was a 24% drop in living kidney donors in 2020; in 2021 the number of living kidney donors increased by 12% compared with 2020 (OTA, 2020, 2021).
In 2020–21, there were over 4,700 hospitalisations in Australia that involved a COVID-19 diagnosis. Almost 400 (8.4%) of these hospitalisations were for people who had a diagnosis of CKD recorded on the admission. Of these, 64 (16%) required a stay in the intensive care unit, 48 (12%) required continuous ventilatory support (AIHW 2022a).
People hospitalised with COVID-19 and CKD in 2020-21 died in hospital at a higher rate than people with any other comorbid condition (29%, 113 deaths), with the exception of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (31%, 65 deaths). This includes type 2 diabetes (19%, 188 deaths) and cardiovascular disease (20%, 189 deaths), which are often comorbid with CKD. The death rate for people with CKD and COVID-19 was also higher than for people with multiple comorbid conditions who were hospitalised with COVID-19 (26%) and people with no comorbid conditions (4.7%) (AIHW 2022a).
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References
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