Family practice
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As a mitigation measure for COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown was implemented in India for a period of 2 months (24 March-31 May 2020). Disruption in antenatal care (ANC) provisions during lockdown is expected due to diversion of public health facilities on pandemic. ⋯ Two out of five pregnant women did not complete the ideal number of visits and developed health problems during the lockdown period.
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Family physicians have played a unique clinical role during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that the pandemic would be associated with significant deleterious effects on clinical activity, educational training, personal safety and well-being. ⋯ Our preliminary data indicate that family medicine residents and teaching faculty were profoundly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies can be directed by current findings with focus on mitigation factors in addressing globally disruptive events such as COVID-19.
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The COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic response created novel challenges for abortion services. Canada was uniquely positioned to transition to telemedicine because internationally common restrictions on abortion medication were removed before the pandemic. ⋯ An accompanying podcast is available in the Supplementary Data, in which the authors Dr Madeleine Ennis and Kate Wahl discuss their research on how family planning care and access to abortion services have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The early identification of COVID-19 patients is of outmost importance in the current pandemic. As with other pathogens, presenting symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 may vary, depending on sociodemographic factors. We aimed to describe the clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients by age/gender and to assess whether the diagnostic performance of these symptoms varied according to these variables. ⋯ We found significant age/gender-related differences in the clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients. Screening strategies based on smell/taste disorders performed better in middle-aged women, but could not ensure a diagnosis of COVID-19 in any subgroup of patients. Future diagnostic strategies should use age/gender differentiated approaches.
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Primary care has played a central role in the community response to the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. The use of the National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2) has been advocated as a tool to guide escalation decisions in the community. The performance of this tool applied in this context is unclear. ⋯ Clinical decisions to escalate care to the hospital did not follow initial guidance written for the COVID-19 outbreak but were demonstrated to be safe.