When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, something strange happened in emergency rooms across the country. A new report shows that in the 10 weeks after the national emergency was declared, fewer people showed up at the ER for the most serious health crises—heart attacks, strokes, and dangerous blood sugar emergencies called hyperglycemic crises.
This wasn't a controlled study with numbers and statistics. It was an observational report that simply noted the pattern: visits went down during that specific time. The report doesn't tell us how many fewer people came in, or whether this led to worse outcomes for those who stayed home.
What's clear is that during a period of intense fear and uncertainty, the normal flow of medical emergencies changed. The report can't prove that fear of COVID caused the drop—it just shows the two events happened around the same time. Without more data, we don't know if people were having fewer actual emergencies, or just avoiding the hospital when they needed it.