Project #17:
Effects of COVID-19 on people with diabetes

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the UK, primary care has changed quite dramatically, with many general practices restricting physical consultations and instead providing phone and video consultations. This has affected the monitoring and management of a range of long-term conditions and is of particular importance in people with diabetes who would ordinarily have their diabetes and associated comorbidities frequently monitored through diabetic reviews at their GP practice and at diabetes clinics within the NHS. It is not yet understood what impact the change in access to services has had on these patients in terms of their diabetes control, cardiovascular risk factors, diabetes-related complications, and mortality.

In previous work, we sought to compare the frequency of primary care interactions, services, monitoring, prescribing, and diagnoses before and after the start of the pandemic, with a view to quantifying the level of unmet need in this patient group and highlighting the anticipated backlog that primary care services would face as restrictions were gradually eased. In this proposed phase of the project, we aim to examine rates of hospitalisation, ICU admissions, diabetes-related complications and associated adverse events by combining data from primary and secondary care, and to investigate specific causes of mortality in people with diabetes.