Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and access to health care of disabled people: a rapid review
This rapid review included 19 UK studies, 18 of which were peer reviewed. Ten were quantitative which means they involved statistics and numbers. Five were qualitative that involved talking to people in interviews, and 4 were mixed methods that involved different research methods.
Eight included adults with 5 involving people with impairments and 7 with children. All these included children with specific impairments and 4 included both adults and children. Three of these studies were with people with learning difficulties and 3 studies considered disabled people as a whole group. None of these studies concentrated on people in Wales specifically.
There were comparisons made in 7 studies to either pre-pandemic times or other disabled people. It cannot be assumed that the studies in this review considered all issues to do with those from other cultures or backgrounds.
There were concerns identified about issues that disabled people had accessing services. There were reports of those who were disabled finding it twice as hard as those who were not disabled to access services during the first wave of the pandemic. Reports of remote services were mixed and there were reports that lack of face-to-face appointments and the use of face masks made it very hard for those with hearing loss.
During the first wave of the pandemic those whose were disabled were no more likely to have COVID-19 but were more likely to be hospitalised when they did have it and when in hospital were more like to need respiratory interventions or be admitted to intensive care. The average stay when in hospital was on average three and a half days longer than for other people.
Mortality rates were higher for those who were disabled and there was inequality in access to mental health care. Many of these studies were from the first wave of the pandemic and a few were from the second wave. There is a definite need for more research to be done and for work to be done on how services recover from the pandemic.
RR00025