We read with interest your letter [1] regarding the delayed presentation of retinal detachments and increased rates of proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) during the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the presentation of your data, we too have examined the cohort of patients that presented at the time of the first peak of CODID-19 (March and April 2020) and compared them with those presenting in the same 2-month period, 12 months prior at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

The question was asked by Awad et al., whether some of this reduction in the presentation was due to patients seeking care more locally in the face of the risk of COVID-19, as well as travel restrictions. In response to this question, we reviewed how far the 480 patients travelled from their home address to Moorfields at City Road, EC1V 2PD (where all of the operations were performed) on Google maps. We noted that there was no statistically significant difference between distance travelled during the two periods (27.1 miles in 2020, 29.6 miles in 2019, p = 0.43 by t test). This suggests that patients continued to travel to a tertiary centre despite the pandemic. This finding begs the question “What happened to the missing retinal detachments?”

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