RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on emergency asthma admissions and deaths: national interrupted time series analyses for Scotland and Wales JF Thorax JO Thorax FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Thoracic Society SP thoraxjnl-2020-216380 DO 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2020-216380 A1 Gwyneth A Davies A1 Mohammad A Alsallakh A1 Shanya Sivakumaran A1 Eleftheria Vasileiou A1 Ronan A Lyons A1 Chris Robertson A1 Aziz Sheikh A1 , YR 2021 UL http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2021/02/11/thoraxjnl-2020-216380.abstract AB Background The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on people with asthma is poorly understood. We hypothesised that lockdown restrictions were associated with reductions in severe asthma exacerbations requiring emergency asthma admissions and/or leading to death.Methods Using data from Public Health Scotland and the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank in Wales, we compared weekly counts of emergency admissions and deaths due to asthma over the first 18 weeks in 2020 with the national averages over 2015–2019. We modelled the impact of instigating lockdown on these outcomes using interrupted time-series analysis. Using fixed-effect meta-analysis, we derived pooled estimates of the overall changes in trends across the two nations. We also investigated trends in asthma-related primary care prescribing and emergency department (ED) attendances in Wales.Results Lockdown was associated with a 36% pooled reduction in emergency admissions for asthma (incidence rate ratio, IRR: 0.64, 95% CI: 0.49 to 0.83, p value 0.001) across both countries. There was no significant change in asthma deaths (pooled IRR: 0.57, 95% CI: 0.17 to 1.94, p value 0.37). ED asthma attendances in Wales declined during lockdown (IRR: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.73 to 0.99, p value 0.03). A large spike of 121% more inhaled corticosteroids and 133% more oral corticosteroid prescriptions was seen in Wales in the week before lockdown.Conclusions National lockdowns were associated with substantial reductions in severe asthma exacerbations leading to hospital admission across both Scotland and Wales, with no corresponding increase in asthma deaths.