COPD and social distancing in the UK

  1. Mark David Walker
  2. Hakan Lane

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Abstract

Background

Those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) were at a higher risk of experiencing severe illness in the event of contracting COVID-19. Did they therefore act more cautiously?

Aim

The aim was to determine whether the condition of COPD incurred significant change in social distancing behavior compared to the general public.

Design and Setting

Data was used from the Imperial ‘COVID-19 Behavioural Tracker’, which details results of regular public surveying on attitudes surrounding COVID-19 guidance.

Methods

Responses by U.K. participants to twenty questions reflecting willingness to adhere to social distancing guidance were compared in those reporting COPD and non-COPD status.

Results

Those with COPD stated a significantly greater willingness to wear face masks during early stages of pandemic. There was greater reluctance to go out and go shopping. There was no apparent or significant difference in willingness to use public transport, suggesting that this was an unavoidable necessity for all. The relationship between level of adherence and COVID-19 case numbers was weak both for those of both COPD and non-COPD status.

Discussion

These results suggest that those with COPD were more cautious and followed guidance more willingly. Advice provided by GP’s and healthcare professionals is likely to be beneficial in guiding patient behaviour.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.08.22270657: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableThere were 52,5 % females and 47,5 % males.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Strengths and limitations: The availability of the Imperial ‘COVID-19 Behavioural Tracker’ dataset offers the unique potential to examine attitudes of those with particular pre-existing health complaints, and whether they differ from the general population. A major benefit is the regular nature over which surveying was performed means that trends in adherence and attitudes could be examined over time. Most previous surveys are conducted at only a single point of time, providing only a ‘snapshot’ of attitudes with no relation to changing legislation or state of the Pandemic. The results show that such attitudes can vary over time. Examination of the factors underlying such attitude changes need to be examined. Limitations are that only a single condition was considered here, COPD. Respondents were questioned as to a range of other health care conditions, including high blood pressure and cancer. Levels of adherence were not examined for other health problems, as a number of those, such as high blood pressure are unlikely to lead to elevated COVID-19 risk. Those with COPD are perceived to be, and indeed were, at great risk if they experienced COVID-19 infection. Another limitation is that underlying factors influencing adherence were not fully examined. The results of logistic regression determined that the presence of COPD was of most importance in face mask wearance. It was not significant in avoidance of public transport, as one might expect if this public transport use coul...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.02.08.22270657 on medRxiv