Letter to the editor in response to: COVID-19 pandemic and challenges for socio-economic issues, healthcare and national programs in India (Gopalan and Misra).

Article by Gopalan and Misra is very informative and covers the current challenges arising due to COVID-19. Further, authors has attempted to explore the various socioeconomic and medical aspects affected during this COVID-19 pandemic. It starts with the economic issues, social impacts, cultural influences, and the health related national programs which are regularly getting impacted owing to the ongoing epidemic. The paper throws light on how the pandemic has strongly affected the jobs, businesses transportation, travel, and other sectors which ultimately influence the social-economic balance of the society. This has further led to the decrease in the GDP of the country. The daily wagers and the local business personnel are the most affected ones during this period.

Significant applications of virtual reality for COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: During COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are using innovative technologies for fast-tracking the development to end this menace. Virtual Reality (VR) also offers an imperative role for fighting this pandemic, through audiovisual-based virtual communication. METHODS: A brief study on Virtual Reality and its applications for the COVID-19 pandemic is carried out by employing keywords as Virtual reality or VR and COVID-19 from the databases of SCOPUS, Google Scholar, PubMed, Web of science Academia and ResearchGate. RESULTS: VR is beneficial for remote sites for exploring telemedicine, planning, treatment, and controlling of the infections by providing proper awareness to the people regarding this disease. CONCLUSIONS: VR technology develops a platform to reduce the face to face interaction of doctors with the infected COVID-19 patients. Through live video streaming, it helps to improve surveillance systems on the ongoing situation.