Trends in medication use during the COVID-19 pandemic in Quebec, Canada.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted health and services worldwide. We aimed to describe the changes in medication use during the COVID-19 pandemic in Quebec, Canada. Using a large healthcare database, we created weekly cohorts of all individuals ≥ 1 year old covered by the public drug plan from January 2016 to March 2022. We calculated the weekly number of prevalent and new users of different medications, including both chronic and short-term medications. We integrated the 2016-2019 weekly numbers in Quasi-Poisson regressions, with each gender and age group fitted separately. From these models, we estimated the weekly proportions of prevalent and new users expected for 2020-2021 and their 99% prediction interval [99% PI]. Results were analyzed using the ratio of the overall weekly proporti

SUBMITTER: Gosselin M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12034801 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature