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A Comparison of COVID-19 Stigma and AIDS Stigma During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study in China.

ABSTRACT: Objective: To understand the current situation of stigmatizing attitudes toward Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China and compare it with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Methods: Convenient sampling and vignette-based methods were used to recruit participants on WeChat. A demographic form and adopted stigma scale were used to collect participants' demographic information and stigmatizing attitudes toward COVID-19 and AIDS. Results: A total of 13,994 questionnaires were included in this study. A high portion of participants tend to avoid contact with individuals affected with COVID-19 (74.3%) or AIDS (59.0%), as well as their family members (70.4% for COVID-19 and 47.9% for AIDS). About half of the participants agreed that affected persons could not only cause problems to their own family but also have adverse effects on others (59.6% and 55.6% for COVID-19, 56.9 and 47.0% for AIDS). The agreements with statements about perceived stigma were similar but slightly higher than those about personal stigma in both COVID-19 and AIDS. Participants' agreements with all statements regarding personal and perceived stigma attitudes between COVID-19 and AIDS were all statistically significant (p < 0.001). Participants obtained COVID-19-related information mainly from social media (91.3%) and newspaper or television (77.1%) during the epidemic, and 61.0% of them thought information from newspapers or television was the most reliable. Conclusion: Several similarities and differences of people's attitude toward COVID-19 and AIDS were found. Avoidance, blame, and secondary discrimination to diagnosed persons and their surrounding persons were the main representations of COVID-19-related stigma. Stigma of COVID-19 had less moral link but more public panic. Experience from HIV-related stigma reduction and prevention can be applied to reduce COVID-19-related stigma.

SUBMITTER: Li M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8671734 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:ObjectiveTo assess factors associated with COVID-19 stigmatizing attitudes in the community and stigma experiences of COVID-19 recovered individuals during first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in India.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in 18 districts located in 7 States in India during September 2020 to January 2021 among adults > 18 years of age selected through systematic random sampling. Data on socio demographic and COVID-19 knowledge were collected from 303 COVID-19 recovered and 1,976 non-COVID-19 infected individuals from community using a survey questionnaire. Stigma was assessed using COVID-19 Stigma Scale and Community COVID-19 Stigma Scale developed for the study. Informed consent was sought from the participants. Univariate and multivariate binary logistic regression analysis were conducted.ResultsHalf of the participants (51.3%) from the community reported prevalence of severe stigmatizing attitudes toward COVID-19 infected while 38.6% of COVID-19 recovered participants reported experiencing severe stigma. Participants from the community were more likely to report stigmatizing attitudes toward COVID-19 infected if they were residents of high prevalent COVID-19 zone (AOR: 1.5; CI: 1.2-1.9), staying in rural areas (AOR: 1.5; CI:1.1-1.9), belonged to the age group of 18-30 years (AOR: 1.6; CI 1.2-2.0), were male (AOR: 1.6; CI: 1.3-1.9), illiterate (AOR: 2.7; CI: 1.8-4.2), or living in Maharashtra (AOR: 7.4; CI: 4.8-11.3). COVID-19 recovered participants had higher odds of experiencing stigma if they had poor knowledge about COVID-19 transmission (AOR: 2.8; CI: 1.3-6.3), were staying for 6-15 years (AOR: 3.24; CI: 1.1-9.4) in the current place of residence or belonged to Delhi (AOR: 5.3; CI: 1.04-26.7).ConclusionFindings indicated presence of stigmatizing attitudes in the community as well as experienced stigma among COVID-19 recovered across selected study sites in India during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Study recommends timely dissemination of factual information to populations vulnerable to misinformation and psychosocial interventions for individuals affected by stigma.

Project description:Background: COVID-19 has severely affected university students everywhere in the world. Due to fear of infection, government and local authorities in China immediately closed academic institutions and tried to find survival techniques to cope with market turbulence. COVID-19 was present in China at the end of 2019. However, little attention has been paid by researchers to coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic, and few measures were taken to assess the coping strategies of university students, specifically following the closure of their institutions. To address this gap, this study attempted to discover the coping strategies of Chinese students during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Methods: We conducted an online survey using a semi-structured questionnaire with a simple random sampling technique and received 559 responses. The survey questions captured information about students' lives during the COVID-19 outbreak, actions to control anxiety, and what students care about during the pandemic. The associations between coping strategies used and levels of anxiety were tested using analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures. SPSS Statistics v27 was used for statistical analysis in this study. Results: The university students reported that coping strategies and survival techniques were required due to high levels of anxiety and psychological pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the respondents reported the prompt closure of their academic institutions due to COVID-19. Psychological concerns, such as lack of sleep, emotional support, mental support and social appeal, were also reported. Conclusions: This is one of the very first studies on coping strategies for anxiety in China. The study reveals that university students employ a number of coping strategies in relation to COVID-19, but also suggests a need to strengthen such strategies in this population. However, the study was limited to a small number of provinces in China, which may affect the generalizability of the research.

Project description:BackgroundInternet hospitals in China are being rapidly developed as an innovative approach to providing health services. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the development of internet hospitals that promote outpatient service delivery to the public via internet technologies. To date, no studies have assessed China's internet hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic.ObjectiveThis study aimed to elucidate the characteristics of China's internet hospitals and assess the health service capacity of these hospitals.MethodsData on 711 internet hospitals were collected from official websites, the WeChat (Tencent Inc) platform, smartphone apps, and the Baidu search engine until July 16, 2020.ResultsAs of July 16, 2020, 711 internet hospitals were developed in mainland China. More than half of these internet hospitals (421/711, 59.2%) were established during 2019 (206/711, 29%) and 2020 (215/711, 30.2%). Furthermore, about one-third (215/711, 30.2%) of internet hospitals were established at the beginning of 2020 as an emergency response to the COVID-19 epidemic. The 711 internet hospitals consisted of the following 3 types of hospitals: government-oriented (42/711, 5.91%), hospital-oriented (143/711, 20.11%), and enterprise-oriented internet hospitals (526/711, 73.98%). The vast majority of internet hospitals were traditional hospitals (526/711, 74%). Nearly 46.1% (221/711) of internet hospitals requested doctors to provide health services at a specific web clinic. Most patients (224/639, 35.1%) accessed outpatient services via WeChat. Internet hospitals' consulting methods included SMS text messaging consultations involving the use of graphics (552/570, 96.8%), video consultations (248/570, 43.5%), and telephone consultations (238/570, 41.8%). The median number of available web-based doctors was 43, and the median consultation fees of fever clinics and other outpatient clinics were ¥0 (US $0) per consultation and ¥6 (US $0.93) per consultation, respectively. Internet hospitals have provided various services during the COVID-19 pandemic, including medical prescription, drug delivery, and medical insurance services.ConclusionsThe dramatic increase of internet hospitals in China has played an important role in the prevention and control of COVID-19. Internet hospitals provide different and convenient medical services for people in need.

Project description:BackgroundAlthough remote communication technologies have been widely used to maintain connections with others against interpersonal contact restrictions and exacerbated loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is unclear whether and what types of remote communication technologies are effective in mitigating loneliness.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the association between remote communication and loneliness when face-to-face meetings with others were strongly prohibited and whether this association varied across types of communication tools, age, and gender.MethodsWe used cross-sectional data from the Japan COVID-19 and Society Internet Survey conducted from August to September 2020. From registered panelists of the research agency, 28,000 randomly sampled participants completed the survey on the website. We created 2 study cohorts who stopped meeting with family members living apart and friends during the pandemic. We categorized whether participants had technology-based remote communication (voice calling, text messaging, and video calling) with family and friends. Loneliness was assessed using the 3-item University of California, Los Angeles Loneliness Scale. We used a modified Poisson regression model to investigate the association between loneliness and remote communication with family members living apart or friends. We also conducted subgroup analyses based on age and gender.ResultsA total of 4483 participants stopped meeting with family members living apart, and 6783 participants stopped meeting with friends during the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote communication with family members living apart did not show an association with loneliness, whereas remote communication with friends was associated with a low prevalence of loneliness (family: adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR]=0.89, 95% CI 0.74-1.08; P=.24 and friends: aPR=0.82, 95% CI 0.73-0.91; P<.001). From analyses by tools, voice calling was associated with low loneliness (family: aPR=0.88, 95% CI 0.78-0.98; P=.03 and friends: aPR=0.87, 95% CI 0.80-0.95; P=.003). Similarly, text messaging was associated with low loneliness (family: aPR=0.82, 95% CI 0.69-0.97; P=.02 and friends: aPR=0.81, 95% CI 0.73-0.89; P<.001). However, we did not find an association between video calling and loneliness (family: aPR=0.88, 95% CI 0.75-1.02; P=.09 and friends: aPR=0.94, 95% CI 0.85-1.04; P=.25). Text messaging with friends was associated with low loneliness regardless of age, whereas voice calling with family or friends was associated with low loneliness only among participants aged ≥65 years. An association between remote communication with friends and low loneliness was found regardless of the type of remote communication tool among men, whereas it was found only for text messaging with friends among women.ConclusionsIn this cross-sectional study of adults in Japan, remote communication, especially via voice calling and text messaging, was associated with low loneliness. Promoting remote communication may reduce loneliness when face-to-face contact is restricted, which should be the subject of future research.

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A Comparison of COVID-19 Stigma and AIDS Stigma During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study in China.

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