New York's COVID-19 shelter-in-place and acute appendicitis in children

On March 20th, 2020, New York City and State went into shelter-in-place in response to the surge of novel coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) cases. Located in central Queens, our hospital experienced a flood of adult cases to our emergency department. In contrast, pediatric emergency department (PED) visits were reduced to 13% compared to the same period a year prior. In a recent article, Kvasnovsky et al described an unchanged number of pediatric appendicitis cases at a single tertiary pediatric referral center during COVID-19 pandemic [1].