Table 4. Outpatient visits to Aravind Eye Care System vision centresa during and before COVID-19 pandemic waves, by visual acuity, Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu, India, 2019–2021.
| Visual acuity in worse eye at presentation | No. outpatient visits (%) |
P valueb | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pandemic periodc (n = 280 592)e |
Comparison periodd (n = 387 906)e |
||
| ≥ 6/18 | 198 515 (70.75) | 276 722 (71.34) | < 0.0001 |
| 6/24–6/60 | 50 707 (18.07) | 73 309 (18.90) | < 0.0001 |
| 5/60–3/60 | 17 137 (6.11) | 20 640 (5.32) | < 0.0001 |
| < 3/60 | 14 233 (5.07) | 17 235 (4.44) | < 0.0001 |
COVID-19: coronavirus disease 2019.
a Vision centres are primary care centres.
b P values were derived using the two-sample proportion test.
c The pandemic period comprised the first two waves of the pandemic from 24 March 2020 to 31 October 2020 and from 1 April 2021 to 30 June 2021, respectively.
d The corresponding comparison periods were from 24 March 2019 to 31 October 2019 and from 1 April 2019 to 30 June 2019, respectively.
e The total numbers of outpatient visits differ from the corresponding totals for vision centres shown in Table 3 because visual acuity was not documented in some case records.