256 The unintended consequences of COVID-19 stay-at-home policies on unintentional injuries in children and youths (0–19)

<h3>Background</h3> Unintentional injuries are a leading cause of hospitalizations among children and youth in Canada. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown measures were imposed across Canada in order to slow down the spread of the virus. In British Columbia, a province-wide lockdown started on March 17, 2020, with all schools closed until September 2020, where mixed in-class/online learning was in place, before returning fully to in-class attendance after September 2021. These school closures may have had unintended consequences on the trends of unintentional injuries and where they occur. <h3>Objective</h3> To determine whether COVID-19 lockdown policies affected injury hospitalizations occurring on the road, at home, and at recreational areas among 0–19-year-olds in British Columbia, Canada. <h3>Methods</h3> Hospitalizations for traffic-related injuries, injuries that occurred at home, and injuries that occurred at recreational areas were extracted from the Discharge Abstract Database (DAD) between January 1, 2015 and March 31, 2022. Negative binomial time series was used to model the pre-COVID period and to forecast into the COVID period to calculate the expected number of injury hospitalizations had the pandemic not occurred. Observed counts were compared with the expected counts to determine whether the lockdown policies affected the trends of unintentional injuries and where they occurred. <h3>Results</h3> 15,578 unintentional injury hospitalizations were captured during the study period. There was a slight reduction in observed unintentional injury hospitalizations overall in the initial lockdown phase, before returning to normal levels. No difference was found for traffic-related injury hospitalizations. Injuries occurring at home reduced slightly during the initial lockdown phase, then increased to above the expected counts throughout 2021. Injuries occurring at recreational areas decreased significantly during the initial lockdown phase and remained below expected levels throughout 2020, before returning to normal levels in 2021. <h3>Conclusions</h3> Pandemic lockdown measures had little effect on the number of unintentional injury hospitalizations, other than in the initial stages. It did affect where these injuries occurred, with many more injuries occurring at home, with effects lasting through 2021, after pandemic measures were eased.