The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that some people may be putting off getting emergency care for serious health conditions during the coronavirus pandemic -- and fewer visits for critical conditions could result in complications or even death.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the total number of visits to hospital emergency departments across the United States for conditions other than COVID-19 was 42% lower than during this same time last year, according to a new CDC report. The new research, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Wednesday, found that emergency department visits drastically fell from about 2.1 million visits per week between March 31 and April 27 last year to 1.2 million between March 29 and April 25 this year.