Two Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Estimating the Effects on Essential Health Services Utilization in Uganda and Bangladesh

Abstract Background Since March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major shock to health systems across the world. We examined national usage patterns for selected basic, essential health services, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, to determine whether COVID-19 affected reporting of service utilization and the use of health services. Methods We used routine health information system data since January 2017 to analyze reporting and service utilization patterns for a variety of health services. Using time series models to replicate pre-COVID-19 trajectories over time we estimated what levels would have been observed if COVID-19 had not occurred during the pandemic months, starting in March 2020. The difference between the observed and predicted levels is the COVID effect on health…