Excess Alcohol-Induced Hospitalisations and Deaths Following the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia

Background: Since the onset of COVID-19, alcohol-related harm has increased in regions such as the United States and United Kingdom. We examined whether this trend applies to Australia, a nation which has had a distinctive pandemic experience, via monthly rates of alcohol-induced hospitalisations and deaths. Methods: We fitted an autoregressive integrated moving average model to monthly alcohol-induced hospitalisation and death rates from July 2016 until February 2020 to forecast the counterfactual trend until April 2021. We estimated the overall change in monthly rates of alcohol-induced hospitalisations and deaths, and changes by sex (male; female), age group (15-34; 35-54; 55+ years), and diagnosis type (cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine diseases [CDE]; neuropsychiatric conditions; poisoning). Findings: Excess monthly alcohol-induced hospitalisations were found overall (681 [95% Prediction Interval 481-872]) and among males (437 [343-528]), females (208 [50-355]), 15-to-34-year-olds (144 [57-226]), and 35-to-54-year-olds (331 [2-636]). Excess monthly alcohol-induced deaths were found overall (13 [4-21]) and among males (10 [0-19]), females (4 [1-7]), and 35-to-54-year-olds (8 [5-11]). Excess alcohol-induced hospitalisations were found for CDE diseases (164 [108-223]) and neuropsychiatric conditions (483 [236-721]). Excess alcohol-induced deaths were found for CDE diseases (10 [2-18]) and poisoning (2 [0-4]). Interpretation: Increases in alcohol-induced hospitalisations and deaths across Australia indicate a need to continue to monitor the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and develop strategies to minimise further harm among those currently affected and in the event of future public health crises. Funding: The Australian Government under the Drug and Alcohol Program, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. Declaration of Interest: AP has received untied educational grants from Seqirus and Mundipharma for study of opioid medicines in Australia. These grants have ceased, and funders had no role in study design, conduct or reporting. No pharmaceutical grants were received for the current study. Ethical Approval: Ethics approval for the study was provided by the UNSW Human Research Ethics Committees (HREC) and jurisdictional HRECs.