Effect of COVID-19 on the Activity Level of Elderly people with Dementia.

Abstract

Measures against physical and social frailty after the COVID-19 epidemic in elderly people with dementia are required. However, there are no studies that have systematically examined the level of activity maintained by elderly people with dementia. In this study, we developed an ICT-based steps monitoring system and investigated changes in the number of steps taken by 13 community-dwelling elderly people with dementia from before the COVID-19 epidemic to during the epidemic. Six of the thirteen subjects maintained approximately 7,000 steps, which was the same level as that before the epidemic. However, some subjects showed a significant decrease in their frequency of going out. This system indicated the construction of a health promotion strategy based on quantitative daily step count data for community-dwelling elderly people with dementia.