Home-visit services for the families with newborns during the COVID-19 pandemic

Home-visit services are provided to families with newborns as means of parenting support. These services potentially are playing major roles during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, where people have been socially isolated. However, the pandemic has deterred the use of this service to some extent. From the Japan "COVID-19 and Society" Internet Survey, we identified that 15% of the survey respondents who delivered between January 2020 and October 2020 refused home visit services. The proportion of the services used during the pandemic (85%) was lower than those used before the pandemic (95%). Home-visit services provide a unique opportunity for public health nurses to assess the risk of postpartum depression and child maltreatment in the family; thus, families with newborns should be instructed to receive home-visit services as well as child immunization and health checkups, despite the continuation of the pandemic.