Incidence of eye problems in children aged 3–6 years during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

Background: Incidence of eye problems increased during the COVID-19 pandemic when home confinement measures were adopted. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes of incidence of eye problems after the ending of COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Vision screening results were retrospectively extracted from the health examination results of children from Southwestern China who were aged 3-6 years in either 2022 or 2023. After interpretation of the vision screening results using an official standard, percentages of abnormal vision screening results were calculated and compared between year 2022 and 2023 using statistical software. Results: In all, vision screening results were extracted from 26396 children in 2022 and 31324 children in 2023. The standardized overall incidence of eye problems was 9.13% in 2022, and 8.78% in 2023. The standardized incidence of myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and anisometropia were 0.84%, 0.55%, 8.64%, and 0.87% in 2022, and 0.60%, 0.61%, 8.06%, 0.45% in 2023, respectively. Logistic regression showed that odds of having eye problems, myopia, astigmatism, or anisometropia were significantly lower in 2023. Conclusion: In the cohort of children aged 3-6 years, the overall incidence of eye problems and incidence of myopia, astigmatism and anisometropia was lower in 2023, together with higher incidence of hyperopia in 2023. Incidence of astigmatism was much higher than that of other types of eye problems. More efforts should be made to lower the incidence of astigmatism in pre-school children, as well as understand the underlying mechanism on the impact of COVID-19 on the eye health of pre-school children.