PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Robertson, Leon
TI  - Did ‘long COVID’ increase road deaths in the USA?
AID  - 10.1136/ip-2023-045136
DP  - 2025 Feb 01
TA  - Injury Prevention
PG  - 18--20
VI  - 31
IP  - 1
4099  - http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/31/1/18.short
4100  - http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/31/1/18.full
SO  - Inj Prev2025 Feb 01; 31
AB  - Objective To examine data on COVID-19 disease associated with a 10% increase in US road deaths from 2020 to 2021 that raises the question of the potential effect of pandemic stress and neurological damage from COVID-19 disease.Methods Poisson regression was used to estimate the association of recent COVID-19 cases, accumulated cases, maximum temperatures, truck registrations and gasoline prices with road deaths monthly among US states in 2021. Using the regression coefficients, changes in each risk factor from 2020 to 2021 were used to calculate expected deaths in 2021 if each factor had remained the same as in 2020.Results Corrected for the other risk factors, road deaths were associated with accumulated COVID-19 cases but not concurrent cases. More than 20 700 road deaths were associated with the changes in accumulated COVID-19 cases but were substantially offset by about 19 100 less-than-expected deaths associated with increased gasoline prices.Conclusions The lingering effects of COVID-19 on neurological function may be a risk factor for behaviour leading to road deaths.Data are available on reasonable request. Data sources are publicly available at the websites cited. The matched data set is available on reasonable request.