(107) Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and control measures on screening and diagnoses of type 2 diabetes in British Columbia

Background: In British Columbia (BC), Canada, COVID-19 and associated control measures impacted routine care for patients with chronic disease, especially diabetes. However, with restricted access to chronic disease care during the pandemic, it is not known how much routine screening and diagnosis of diabetes may have been impacted in BC.

Objectives: Our aim for this study was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related control measures on screening and diagnosis of type 2 diabetes among British Columbians.

Methods: We used data from the BC COVID-19 Cohort, which includes COVID-19 and health care administrative data on all residents of BC. We assessed and compared screening and diagnosis of diabetes among the population ≥ 40 years old (for screening) and ≥ 18 ( for diagnoses) during the pandemic period (March 1st, 2020 – December 31st, 2022), with January 1st, 2016 – April 31st, 2020, used as a historical reference period. We used interrupted time series with generalized additive models to evaluate the impact of policy measures on screening and diagnoses.

Results: In the third post-policy phase (Jan 2022 – Dec 2022), there was an insignificant 4.8% increase in screenings. After an initial reduction in diabetes diagnoses, we observed a significant increase of 31.6% in the third post-policy phase. Further stratification by age and sex showed the entire increase in diagnoses trends was driven by females with a 58.7 % (38.2,81.3) and 56.4% (25.1, 92.9) increment in diagnoses in the 40-49 and 18–29 age groups respectively.

Conclusions: The initial reduced number of screenings and diagnoses followed by the significant upward trend in diabetes diagnoses in the later post-policy phase have important clinical and public health implications. Further research is needed to understand the post-pandemic increase in type 2 diabetes among females.