The impact of COVID-19 on health equality and mortality in people with epilepsy in Wales

End of project summary

Content 

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 or C19) has had significant health and economic effects in Wales as well as throughout the world. Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological conditions, affecting around 30,000 people in Wales. There have been concerns that C19 has affected people with epilepsy in many ways. These have included the direct effects of C19 such as more severe C19 and increased C19 deaths for people with epilepsy, as well as the indirect effects of the C19 pandemic making it harder for people with epilepsy in Wales to get the care they need for their epilepsy. Despite these concerns, there have been very few studies on the effects of C19 for people with epilepsy. In this project, we investigated some of the effects of C19 on around 27,000 people living with epilepsy in Wales using anonymised health data during the C19 pandemic, up until June 2021. 

Main messages 

• Although overall risk was low, people with epilepsy did have an increased risk of being hospitalised with C19 and dying from C19. This was when compared to people without epilepsy, of the same age and sex with similar other illnesses, living in similar areas.  
• The reason for this is not clear but people with epilepsy may require additional precautions in future pandemics and should continue to be prioritised for future C19 and similar vaccination programmes. 
• Reassuringly people with epilepsy had an increased uptake of C19 vaccines when compared to the general population. 
• There were no C19 deaths in children, irrespective of vaccine status, or in anyone after having at least two C19 vaccines. 
• People with epilepsy had, on average, around double the number of hospital admissions, emergency department, and outpatient visits before the pandemic when compared to the Welsh average. These visits decreased significantly during the pandemic and may mean that people with epilepsy were not getting the correct levels of care for their epilepsy during the pandemic.