Domestic child injury during the pandemic lockdown

There have been more domestic accidents than cases of COVID-19 in children, data published in June has shown. A letter by Bressan et al (2020) in the British Medical Journal’s Archives of Disease in Childhood described how long-term isolation, due to the lockdown measures in Italy (introduced in March to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic), bear the potential for increased risk of domestic accidents in children, as collateral damage of the national crisis. Bressan et al (2020) therefore assessed the frequency and severity of presentations for domestic accidents between 8 March following the introduction of lockdown measures, and 20 April 2020, in comparison with the corresponding period in 2019. The search for data was performed on the paediatric emergency department (PED) electronic database for injury presentations related to trauma, poisoning, burns, and foreign bodies in the respiratory or gastrointestinal tract, or the ear, nose or throat, and any presentations identified as domestic injury at triage. The researchers reviewed the identified records in order to accurately identify injuries that occurred in the household, excluding any children under the age of one, as they would commonly stay at home independently of whether there is a lockdown in place or not. Alongside this, the researchers also excluded self-inflicted injuries or intentional poisonings.