Brant, Luisa Campos CaldeiraPinheiro, Pedro CisalpinoMachado, Ísis EloahCorrea, Paulo Roberto LopesSantos, Mayara Rocha dosRibeiro, Antônio Luiz PinhoTupinambás, UnaíSantiago, Christine FerrettiSouza, Maria de Fátima Marinho deMalta, Deborah CarvalhoPassos, Valéria Maria de Azeredo2023-06-232023-06-232021BRANT, L. C. C. et al. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic course in the number and severity of hospitalizations for other natural causes in a large urban center in Brazil. PLOS Glob Public Health, v. 1, n. 12, artigo e0000054, 2021. Disponível em: <https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0000054>. Acesso em: 11 out. 2022.1553-7366http://www.repositorio.ufop.br/jspui/handle/123456789/16787The COVID-19 pandemic may indirectly impact hospitalizations for other natural causes. Belo Horizonte is a city with 2.5 million inhabitants in Brazil, one of the most hardly-hit coun- tries by the pandemic, where local authorities monitored hospitalizations daily to guide regu- latory measures. In an ecological, time-series study, we investigated how the pandemic impacted the number and severity of public hospitalizations by other natural causes in the city, during 2020. We assessed the number and proportion of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions and in-hospital deaths for all-natural causes, COVID-19, non-COVID-19 natural causes, and four disease groups: infectious, respiratory, cardiovascular, and neoplasms. Observed data from epidemiological week (EW) 9 (first diagnosis of COVID-19) to EW 48, 2020, was compared to the mean for the same EW of 2015–2019 and differences were tested by Wilcoxon rank-sum test. The five-week moving averages of the studied variables in 2020 were compared to that of 2015–2019 to describe the influence of regulatory mea- sures on the indicators. During the studied period, there was 54,722 hospitalizations by non- COVID-19 natural causes, representing a 28% decline compared to the previous five years (p<0.001). There was a concurrent significant increase in the proportion of ICU admissions and deaths. The greater reductions were simultaneous to the first social distancing decree or occurred in the peak of COVID-19 hospitalizations, suggesting different drivers. Hospitali- zations by specific causes decreased significantly, with greater increase in ICU admissions and deaths for infectious, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases than for neoplasms. While the first reduction may have resulted from avoidance of contact with healthcare facili- ties, the second reduction may represent competing causes for hospital beds with COVID- 19 after reopening of activities. Health policies must include protocols to address hospitali- zations by other causes during this or future pandemics, and a plan to face the rebound effect for elective deferred procedures.en-USabertoArtigo publicado em periodicoThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Fonte: PDF do artigo.https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000054