Impact on health and provision of healthcare services during the COVID-19 lockdown in India: a multicentre cross-sectional study

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a national lockdown in India from midnight on 25 March 2020, with conditional relaxation by phases and zones from 20 April. We evaluated the impact of the lockdown in terms of healthcare provisions, physical health, mental health and social well-being within a multicentre cross-sectional study in India.

Methods: The SMART India study is an ongoing house-to-house survey conducted across 20 regions including 11 states and 1 union territory in India to study diabetes and its complications in the community. During the lockdown, we developed an online questionnaire and delivered it in English and seven popular Indian languages (Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Telegu, Kannada, Bengali, Malayalam) to random samples of SMART-India participants in two rounds from 5 May 2020 to 24 May 2020. We used multivariable logistic regression to evaluate the overall impact on health and healthcare provision in phases 3 and 4 of lockdown in red and non-red zones and their interactions.

Results: A total of 2003 participants completed this multicentre survey. The bivariate relationships between the outcomes and lockdown showed significant negative associations. In the multivariable analyses, the interactions between the red zones and lockdown showed that all five dimensions of healthcare provision were negatively affected (non-affordability: OR 1.917 (95% CI 1.126 to 3.264), non-accessibility: OR 2.458 (95% CI 1.549 to 3.902), inadequacy: OR 3.015 (95% CI 1.616 to 5.625), inappropriateness: OR 2.225 (95% CI 1.200 to 4.126) and discontinuity of care: OR 6.756 (95% CI 3.79 to 12.042)) and associated depression and social loneliness.

Conclusion: The impact of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on health and healthcare was negative. The exaggeration of income inequality during lockdown can be expected to extend the negative impacts beyond the lockdown.