Lessons Learned During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Central India: Overlooked Psychological and Social Determinants of Health.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which started in 2019, has created unprecedented public health problems, mental health crises, and economic and social problems. These effects have been studied by numerous researchers on the general population but none on hospitalized and discharged COVID-19 patients. AIM: To assess psychological and social problems among hospitalized and discharged COVID-19 patients. METHODS: During lockdown and post-lockdown in India, we interviewed 500 COVID-19 patients admitted at our tertiary care center during their hospitalization and post-discharge period for psychological and social problems. RESULTS: The common psychological issues in hospitalized patients during lockdown were anxiety and misconceptions about COVID-19, while insomnia, anxiety, and frustration were common during the post-lockdown period. The typical social problems in hospitalized patients during the lockdown were containment-related issues, discrimination, longer wait for repeat COVID-19 tests, and boredom; whereas issues related to employment and financial matters were common during post-lockdown. Psychological problems comparatively decreased whereas social problems increased after discharge. CONCLUSION: Unrehearsed mitigation strategies at the beginning of the pandemic unknowingly led to various psychological and social problems. It was further aggravated by a lack of information and miscommunication.

Understanding the phases of vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vaccine hesitancy is an important feature of every vaccination and COVID-19 vaccination is not an exception. During the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine hesitancy has exhibited different phases and has shown both temporal and spatial variation in these phases. This has likely arisen due to varied socio-behavioural characteristics of humans and their response towards COVID 19 pandemic and its vaccination strategies. This commentary highlights that there are multiple phases of vaccine hesitancy: Vaccine Eagerness, Vaccine Ignorance, Vaccine Resistance, Vaccine Confidence, Vaccine Complacency and Vaccine Apathy. Though the phases seem to be sequential, they may co-exist at the same time in different regions and at different times in the same region. This may be attributed to several factors influencing the phases of vaccine hesitancy. The complexities of the societal reactions need to be understood in full to be addressed better. There is a dire need of different strategies of communication to deal with the various nuances of all of the phases. To address of vaccine hesitancy, an understanding of the societal reactions leading to various phases of vaccine hesitancy is of utmost importance.