Table 1.

A comparison of emergency department overall attendances, frequent attenders, and frequent attenders with medically unexplained symptoms between two 122-day periods in 2019 (Control) and 2020 (COVID-19)

	Control	COVID-19	RR (95%CI), p-value
ED visits, n	42,785	28,806
ED visits per 1kpop/yr	114.4	77.0
Frequent attenders
Patients, n	163	147
Patients per 1kpop/yr	1.3	1.2	0.95 (95%CI 0.90–1.01), p=0.13
ED visits, n	1185	1000
ED visits per 1kpop/yr	9.5	8.0	0.92 (95%CI 0.90–0.94), p<0.0001
Frequent attenders with medically unexplained symptoms
Patients, n	44	65
Patients per 1kpop/yr	0.4	0.5	1.5 (95%CI 1.1–1.8), p=0.0006
ED visits, n	149	267
ED visits per 1kpop/yr	1.2	2.1	1.8 (95%CI 1.6–2.0), p<0.0001

ED = emergency department; RR = relative risk; 95%CI = 95% confidence interval; 1kpop/year = 1,000 population at risk per year incidence