In this issue of BMJ Quality and Safety, Carr and colleagues provide important data on the scale of interruptions in the routine management of patients with T2D in UK primary care before and after the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.9 This large cohort study of 161 181 patients with T2D assessed temporal changes in the rates of diabetes health checks (or ‘care processes’) recommended by the English National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and the prescribing of medications to people with T2D. England’s first national COVID-19 lockdown was in place between late March and May 2020. The authors assessed six selected care processes during three time periods: April 2020 (first full month of national lockdown), May–December 2020 (recovery period) and March–December 2020 periods (lockdown and recovery periods combined), and compared the observed rates during these periods and the expected rates based on 10-year pre-pandemic trends
