Changes In Daily Physical Activity Of The Elderly Under A State Of Emergency

Abstract

PURPOSE:To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease, a state of emergency was declared in Japan from April 7 to May 25, 2020 and from January 8 to February 7, 2021. The study aimed to quantify the changes in physical activity of the elderly residing in Japan before and after the state of emergency during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS:Twenty-six participants who have continued to participate in the health exercise class during the COVID-19 pandemic consented to participate in this study. This health exercise class has been held twice a month since 2012. Every day, the participants wore an electronic pedometer (Kenz Lifecoder-Gs, Suzuken Co., Ltd., Nagoya, Japan) over their hips to measure their daily physical activity. Four phases were analyzed; Phase I: February to March 2020 (before the emergency declaration - had regular health exercise classes), Phase II: May to June 2020 (all classroom education was canceled), Phase III: September to October 2020 (classroom education resumed), and Phase IV: February to March 2021 (all classroom education canceled again). Participants were divided into 4 groups according to genderand age groups, 1) Young-Old, ages 65 to 74 years, 2) Middle-Old, over 75 years. The differences among the groups on the number of steps and the intensity of activity were examined by repeated measures one-way ANOVA. RESULTS:Eighteen participants (9 males; average age 76.3 ± 3.4 years) completed the survey. The average number of daily walking steps were no significant differences during any of these four Phases. Total minutes of the 0 intensity (including sleep time) were 836 ± 187, 850 ± 205, 834 ± 196, 889 ± 189 minutes / day. The total minutes of micro activity level (sedentary, inactivity) were 524 ± 191, 508 ± 207, 528 ± 199, 470 ± 170 minutes / day. There were significant differences of these total minutes depending on the Phases (p = 0.011, p < 0.0001, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Health-conscious elderly people attending exercise classes continued to walk as a form of physical activity even under a state of emergency during the pandemic. This study suggests that amount of physical activity under the pandemic could be maintained even simply by wearing a pedometer. When the exercise class was not held, the inactivity minutes increased, suggesting the need for guidance to reduce the sitting time.