We are sharing links to similar research and related work across the world to help support understanding of how the social response to Covid has affected people who use drugs.
Where possible, we are providing links to publicly accessible reports. Unfortunately, some journals require a payment to read their articles. We have indicated how available each report is.
Several of these are academic or clinical reports that use technical language that may not be accessible to everyone. We have provided a very brief, plain-language summary below.
| Title | COVID-19 risk and outcomes in patients with substance use disorders: analyses from electronic health records in the United States |
| Type | Clinical / academic research study report. |
| Accessibility | Publicly available |
| What they did | Researchers looked at the clinical records of 73 million patients across the U.S.A. They wanted to see if people who had a diagnosed drug problem were (1) more likely to be infected with Covid and (2) more likely to be hospitalised or die if they had Covid. |
| What they found | People diagnosed with a drug problem in the past year were almost 9 times more likely to be diagnosed with Covid compared to people without a drug problem. The risk was even higher for people who were diagnosed with an opioid addiction who were 10 times more likely to be diagnosed with Covid than people without a drug problem. Among people with Covid, those who had a diagnosed drug problem were more likely to be hospitalised (41%) than those without a drug problem (30%). Among people with Covid, those who had a diagnosed drug problem were more likely to die (10%) compared to those without a drug problem (7%). |
| Link | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-020-00880-7 |