Pandemic-related sales ban of fireworks in Germany leads to a significant reduction of firework-related eye injuries

The continuous recording of eye injuries caused by fireworks around New Year's Eve over 6 years allows us to investigate injury numbers, injury patterns, and accident histories in a year to year comparison. In order to relieve the burden on hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, a ban on the sale of firework articles was implemented in Germany for 2020/2021 and 2021/2022. We investigate the impact of these measures on the number of fireworks-related eye injuries and analyze whether this led to an increase in serious injuries and an association with increased use of homemade pyrotechnics or pyrotechnics potentially not approved in Germany. We used our online questionnaire to collect anonymized data on patients, accident history, and, since 2017/2018 information on the acquisition of firework articles. Our analysis included data from 2151 affected individuals. While data of about 500 injured were entered per year before the pandemic, this number decreased to 79 in 2020/2021 and 193 in 2021/2022. The proportion of severe eye injuries requiring inpatient care ranged from 21% to 26% in the years before the pandemic but ranged from 27% to 34% in the pandemic years. At the same time, under the sales ban the proportion of fireworks that were homemade or unofficially purchased increased from 3% to nearly 10%. In terms of absolute numbers, however, there were 67 accidents involving unofficially purchased pyrotechnics compared with 1675 incidents involving officially purchased or unidentified fireworks, which can be explained by the high proportion (about 50%) of injured bystanders. The absolute number of patients with eye injuries caused by pyrotechnics decreased under the pandemic conditions from about 500 to 79 or 193. The use of fireworks designated as unofficially purchased was proportionally low even under the sales ban, and plays a minor role compared to injuries with officially purchased fireworks articles.