Where have all the non-coronavirus patients gone?

Where have all my patients gone? I’ve been asking myself this question increasingly over recent weeks. We’ve heard a lot since the arrival of Covid-19 about illness, health and disease, but the conditions I treat appear to have disappeared.

As a busy neurologist I normally see over 1,500 people every year as part of my job. Many of these people will have long-term conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy or migraine which affect millions in the UK. New cases are diagnosed all the time and flare-ups occur for existing patients, even when they have the best treatment. Yet this is no longer happening. While some consultations still happen over the telephone, new referrals have dramatically reduced and I am now seeing around half the number of patients as normal. It could be that no news is good news, and there has been a recent reduction in cases, but I suspect this is wishful thinking, and many are suffering during the lockdown.