November 3, 2020

OpenSAFELY preprint on living with children and COVID-19 outcomes

OpenSAFELY is a platform which analyses existing NHS electronic health records to look for patterns in patients who are hospitalised with or die with COVID-19.

The team conducted a population-based cohort study including over 9 million adults under 65 years of age and over 2 million adults aged over 65, some of whom live with children and some don’t, and looked at which adults had evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, which were admitted to hospital with COVID-19, which were admitted to ICU for ventilatory support with COVID-19 and which died with COVID-19.

Please note this study contained data from between February and August 2020, so it covers the period of school closures in spring but does not cover the period of schools reopening fully in September, so the data were not applicable to schools reopening.

Journalists dialled in to this briefing to hear the authors of the study explain whether they found associations between living with children and any of these COVID-19 outcomes.

Note that this data is a preprint, so it is early work that has not yet been through peer-review and is not published in a journal.

Speakers included:

Dr Laurie Tomlinson, Electronic Health Records Research Group, Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Prof Liam Smeeth, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Dr Ben Goldacre, Director of the DataLab in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

Prof Stephen Evans, Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

This Briefing was accompanied by an SMC Roundup of Comments.