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Background: COVID-19 pandemic effects are still being elucidated. Stay-at-home orders and social distancing compounded with COVID-19 concerns have caused significant disruptions in daily life. One notable effect of these variables may be a change in the number of emergency department (ED) visits. This study aims to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on ED visits, and possible reasons for changes. Methods: Retrospective analysis using CDC data for ED visits and percentage of visits for COVID-19-Like Illness (CLI) and Influenza-Like Illness (ILI). Google Trends was used to assess COVID-19 public awareness. Motor vehicle collision (MVC) data was collected from cities, which reported current data. A descriptive statistical analysis and two-sample t-test was performed on ED visit data to assess for significance and a descriptive analysis was conducted to assess COVID-19's impact on MVCs. Results: The mean number of ED visits per week for the last four weeks of available data during the pandemic was significantly less than the four weeks prior to COVID-19 pandemic (p = 0.008). The ED visit decrease per week varied by region, with Region 1 having the greatest decrease (45%). MVCs decreased substantially across all cities studied, with New York City and Baton Rouge experiencing the greatest decrease (66%) during the pandemic. Conclusion:A number of factors have likely contributed to the substantial decrease in ED visits observed in this study. In light of these findings, it is important to raise patient awareness regarding acute conditions that are deadlier than COVID-19 and require immediate medical intervention to ensure recovery.

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre -including this research content -immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

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