conclusion of covid 19 pandemic essay

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) and society: what matters to people in Scotland?

Findings from an open free text survey taken to understand in greater detail how the pandemic has changed Scotland.

This research has captured the diversity and complexity of people’s experiences.
People’s experiences of the pandemic and their ability to stay safe has been impacted by a range of factors, including: their geographical environment, their financial situation, profession, their living situation and if they have any physical or mental health conditions.
Even though the direct level of threat from COVID-19 has reduced (for some people), there is still concern about the longer term harm and disruption that COVID-19 has caused to people and communities, and worry about the threat of future waves of infection.
This report captures a number of specific suggestions for support. For example, support for key workers, creating safer public environments, wide-scale financial support, greater awareness around the experiences of those who are at higher risk to COVID-19 and putting in place robust processes for learning and reflection on the impact of the pandemic.
Public engagement in this open and unfiltered format is an essential part of making sense of people’s attitudes and behaviours within the context of their life.

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The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic

The year 2019 will forever be engraved in many people’s hearts and minds as the time when a deadly virus known as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) invaded almost all the sectors, thereby disrupting daily activities. It is described as a communicable respiratory illness which is triggered by a new strain of coronavirus which leads to various ailments in human beings. There is currently no known cure or vaccine for the virus as scientists worldwide are still trying to learn about the illness to respond appropriately through research (Goodell, 2020). This paper aims at exploring the effects that the pandemic has had on society regarding the economy, social life, education, religion, and family.

The emergence of the pandemic, which began in China-2019, quickly spread to other nations across the world with devastating effects on their economies As a way of containing the disease, many countries instituted strict measures, such as curfews, the mandatory wearing of masks, and social distancing of 1 meter apart (Goodell, 2020). Covid-19 has significantly changed the way these preventive methods relate with each concerning trade matters. The majority of the states affected opted to close their borders as fear among the citizens increased. The implementation of the strict rules interfered with the business operations of many nations. It became difficult for international trade to continue as a result of the closed borders. Most businesses have also had to close due to financial constraints.

When it comes to socialization, people have been forced to use other means to meet their friends and families across the world. Social media platforms have seen an increased usage during this difficult time as people try to find new ways of socializing. It has happened especially in such countries as Australia, where the restrictions were extreme as it enforced a lockdown for close to a hundred days (Goodell, 2020). The use of masks is also quickly becoming the new norm across numerous states. Unlike in developed countries where the governments have offered their citizens some aid mostly in terms of cash transfers, developing countries have struggled to balance between the people’s livelihood and the containment of the Covid-19. As such, most people have turned to social media platforms as a medium of communication and socialization due to lockdowns.

Learning institutions have also not been spared by the Covid-19 pandemic. Most countries affected by the spread of the virus were forced to suspend their educational curriculum calendar to allow children and university students to stay home until the time when the disease is finally neutralized (Goodell, 2020). However, students and parents have been pushing the governments to resume schools with clear protocols which ensure that both the students and the teachers follow the rules, including the mandatory wearing of masks. Religion has also been significantly affected as it has become difficult for people to seek for spiritual nourishment (Goodell, 2020). Many religious leaders have had to devise other ways of reaching out to the congregates. For example, many churches now have to move their services online by using such platforms as YouTube, Facebook, Zoom, among others to convey essential teachings.

Covid-19 has also directly affected many families across the world, as the majority have succumbed to the disease. The United States of America and Italy are some of the pandemic’s worst casualties, where many people were killed by the lethal virus (Goodell, 2020). Some people have in the end lost more than one member of the family because of the disease, and in some worse case scenarios, the illness has claimed a whole family.

In conclusion, this paper has highlighted the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy, social life, education, religion, and family units. Many countries and businesses had underestimated the disease’s impact before they later suffered from the consequences. Therefore, international bodies, such as the World Health Organization, need to help developing countries establish critical management healthcare systems, which can help to deal with the future pandemics.

Goodell, J. W. (2020). COVID-19 and finance: Agendas for future research. Finance Research Letters , 35 , 101512. Web.

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Serious disabled woman concentrating on her work she sitting at her workplace and working on computer at office

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

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Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.” Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.” Prospects 49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.” BioRxiv (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.” Jama 323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

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Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

Print article

Writing about COVID-19 in your college admission essay

For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

Are my experiences different from others’?
Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
Am I aware of my privilege?
Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

Grading scales and policies
Graduation requirements
Instructional methods
Schedules and course offerings
Testing requirements
Your academic calendar
Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

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The complexity of managing COVID-19: How important is good governance?

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Alaka m. basu , amb alaka m. basu professor, department of global development - cornell university, senior fellow - united nations foundation kaushik basu , and kaushik basu nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development @kaushikcbasu jose maria u. tapia jmut jose maria u. tapia student - cornell university.

November 17, 2020

13 min read

This essay is part of “ Reimagining the global economy: Building back better in a post-COVID-19 world ,” a collection of 12 essays presenting new ideas to guide policies and shape debates in a post-COVID-19 world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of public health systems worldwide, casting a shadow that we could not have imagined even a year ago. As the fog of confusion lifts and we begin to understand the rudiments of how the virus behaves, the end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight. The number of cases and the deaths continue to rise. The latter breached the 1 million mark a few weeks ago and it looks likely now that, in terms of severity, this pandemic will surpass the Asian Flu of 1957-58 and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968-69.

Moreover, a parallel problem may well exceed the direct death toll from the virus. We are referring to the growing economic crises globally, and the prospect that these may hit emerging economies especially hard.

The economic fall-out is not entirely the direct outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic but a result of how we have responded to it—what measures governments took and how ordinary people, workers, and firms reacted to the crisis. The government activism to contain the virus that we saw this time exceeds that in previous such crises, which may have dampened the spread of the COVID-19 but has extracted a toll from the economy.

This essay takes stock of the policies adopted by governments in emerging economies, and what effect these governance strategies may have had, and then speculates about what the future is likely to look like and what we may do here on.

Nations that build walls to keep out goods, people and talent will get out-competed by other nations in the product market.

It is becoming clear that the scramble among several emerging economies to imitate and outdo European and North American countries was a mistake. We get a glimpse of this by considering two nations continents apart, the economies of which have been among the hardest hit in the world, namely, Peru and India. During the second quarter of 2020, Peru saw an annual growth of -30.2 percent and India -23.9 percent. From the global Q2 data that have emerged thus far, Peru and India are among the four slowest growing economies in the world. Along with U.K and Tunisia these are the only nations that lost more than 20 percent of their GDP. 1

COVID-19-related mortality statistics, and, in particular, the Crude Mortality Rate (CMR), however imperfect, are the most telling indicator of the comparative scale of the pandemic in different countries. At first glance, from the end of October 2020, Peru, with 1039 COVID-19 deaths per million population looks bad by any standard and much worse than India with 88. Peru’s CMR is currently among the highest reported globally.

However, both Peru and India need to be placed in regional perspective. For reasons that are likely to do with the history of past diseases, there are striking regional differences in the lethality of the virus (Figure 11.1). South America is worse hit than any other world region, and Asia and Africa seem to have got it relatively lightly, in contrast to Europe and America. The stark regional difference cries out for more epidemiological analysis. But even as we await that, these are differences that cannot be ignored.

To understand the effect of policy interventions, it is therefore important to look at how these countries fare within their own regions, which have had similar histories of illnesses and viruses (Figure 11.2). Both Peru and India do much worse than the neighbors with whom they largely share their social, economic, ecological and demographic features. Peru’s COVID-19 mortality rate per million population, or CMR, of 1039 is ahead of the second highest, Brazil at 749, and almost twice that of Argentina at 679.

Similarly, India at 88 compares well with Europe and the U.S., as does virtually all of Asia and Africa, but is doing much worse than its neighbors, with the second worst country in the region, Afghanistan, experiencing less than half the death rate of India.

The official Indian statement that up to 78,000 deaths 2 were averted by the lockdown has been criticized 3 for its assumptions. A more reasonable exercise is to estimate the excess deaths experienced by a country that breaks away from the pattern of its regional neighbors. So, for example, if India had experienced Afghanistan’s COVID-19 mortality rate, it would by now have had 54,112 deaths. And if it had the rate reported by Bangladesh, it would have had 49,950 deaths from COVID-19 today. In other words, more than half its current toll of some 122,099 COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided if it had experienced the same virus hit as its neighbors.

What might explain this outlier experience of COVID-19 CMRs and economic downslide in India and Peru? If the regional background conditions are broadly similar, one is left to ask if it is in fact the policy response that differed markedly and might account for these relatively poor outcomes.

Peru and India have performed poorly in terms of GDP growth rate in Q2 2020 among the countries displayed in Table 2, and given that both these countries are often treated as case studies of strong governance, this draws attention to the fact that there may be a dissonance between strong governance and good governance.

The turnaround for India has been especially surprising, given that until a few years ago it was among the three fastest growing economies in the world. The slowdown began in 2016, though the sharp downturn, sharper than virtually all other countries, occurred after the lockdown.

On the COVID-19 policy front, both India and Peru have become known for what the Oxford University’s COVID Policy Tracker 4 calls the “stringency” of the government’s response to the epidemic. At 8 pm on March 24, 2020, the Indian government announced, with four hours’ notice, a complete nationwide shutdown. Virtually all movement outside the perimeter of one’s home was officially sought to be brought to a standstill. Naturally, as described in several papers, such as that of Ray and Subramanian, 5 this meant that most economic life also came to a sudden standstill, which in turn meant that hundreds of millions of workers in the informal, as well as more marginally formal sectors, lost their livelihoods.

In addition, tens of millions of these workers, being migrant workers in places far-flung from their original homes, also lost their temporary homes and their savings with these lost livelihoods, so that the only safe space that beckoned them was their place of origin in small towns and villages often hundreds of miles away from their places of work.

After a few weeks of precarious living in their migrant destinations, they set off, on foot since trains and buses had been stopped, for these towns and villages, creating a “lockdown and scatter” that spread the virus from the city to the town and the town to the village. Indeed, “lockdown” is a bit of a misnomer for what happened in India, since over 20 million people did exactly the opposite of what one does in a lockdown. Thus India had a strange combination of lockdown some and scatter the rest, like in no other country. They spilled out and scattered in ways they would otherwise not do. It is not surprising that the infection, which was marginally present in rural areas (23 percent in April), now makes up some 54 percent of all cases in India. 6

In Peru too, the lockdown was sudden, nationwide, long drawn out and stringent. 7 Jobs were lost, financial aid was difficult to disburse, migrant workers were forced to return home, and the virus has now spread to all parts of the country with death rates from it surpassing almost every other part of the world.

As an aside, to think about ways of implementing lockdowns that are less stringent and geographically as well as functionally less total, an example from yet another continent is instructive. Ethiopia, with a COVID-19 death rate of 13 per million population seems to have bettered the already relatively low African rate of 31 in Table 1. 8

We hope that human beings will emerge from this crisis more aware of the problems of sustainability.

The way forward

We next move from the immediate crisis to the medium term. Where is the world headed and how should we deal with the new world? Arguably, that two sectors that will emerge larger and stronger in the post-pandemic world are: digital technology and outsourcing, and healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

The last 9 months of the pandemic have been a huge training ground for people in the use of digital technology—Zoom, WebEx, digital finance, and many others. This learning-by-doing exercise is likely to give a big boost to outsourcing, which has the potential to help countries like India, the Philippines, and South Africa.

Globalization may see a short-run retreat but, we believe, it will come back with a vengeance. Nations that build walls to keep out goods, people and talent will get out-competed by other nations in the product market. This realization will make most countries reverse their knee-jerk anti-globalization; and the ones that do not will cease to be important global players. Either way, globalization will be back on track and with a much greater amount of outsourcing.

To return, more critically this time, to our earlier aside on Ethiopia, its historical and contemporary record on tampering with internet connectivity 9 in an attempt to muzzle inter-ethnic tensions and political dissent will not serve it well in such a post-pandemic scenario. This is a useful reminder for all emerging market economies.

We hope that human beings will emerge from this crisis more aware of the problems of sustainability. This could divert some demand from luxury goods to better health, and what is best described as “creative consumption”: art, music, and culture. 10 The former will mean much larger healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors.

But to take advantage of these new opportunities, nations will need to navigate the current predicament so that they have a viable economy once the pandemic passes. Thus it is important to be able to control the pandemic while keeping the economy open. There is some emerging literature 11 on this, but much more is needed. This is a governance challenge of a kind rarely faced, because the pandemic has disrupted normal markets and there is need, at least in the short run, for governments to step in to fill the caveat.

Emerging economies will have to devise novel governance strategies for doing this double duty of tamping down on new infections without strident controls on economic behavior and without blindly imitating Europe and America.

Here is an example. One interesting opportunity amidst this chaos is to tap into the “resource” of those who have already had COVID-19 and are immune, even if only in the short-term—we still have no definitive evidence on the length of acquired immunity. These people can be offered a high salary to work in sectors that require physical interaction with others. This will help keep supply chains unbroken. Normally, the market would have on its own caused such a salary increase but in this case, the main benefit of marshaling this labor force is on the aggregate economy and GDP and therefore is a classic case of positive externality, which the free market does not adequately reward. It is more a challenge of governance. As with most economic policy, this will need careful research and design before being implemented. We have to be aware that a policy like this will come with its risk of bribery and corruption. There is also the moral hazard challenge of poor people choosing to get COVID-19 in order to qualify for these special jobs. Safeguards will be needed against these risks. But we believe that any government that succeeds in implementing an intelligently-designed intervention to draw on this huge, under-utilized resource can have a big, positive impact on the economy 12 .

This is just one idea. We must innovate in different ways to survive the crisis and then have the ability to navigate the new world that will emerge, hopefully in the not too distant future.

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

If you're in search of a compelling persuasive essay on business, don't miss out on our “ persuasive essay about business ” blog!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

Interested in thought-provoking discussions on abortion? Read our persuasive essay about abortion blog to eplore arguments!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

Looking for a persuasive take on the topic of smoking? You'll find it all related arguments in out Persuasive Essay About Smoking blog!

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

MyPerfectWords.com is a professional persuasive essay writing service that can help you craft an excellent persuasive essay on Covid-19. Our experienced essay writer will create a well-structured, insightful paper in no time!

So don't hesitate and place your ' write my essay online ' request today!

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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Editor in Chief's Introduction to Essays on the Impact of COVID-19 on Work and Workers

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a global pandemic, indicating significant global spread of an infectious disease ( World Health Organization, 2020 ). At that point, there were 118,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in 110 countries. China had been the first country with a widespread outbreak in January, and South Korea, Iran and Italy following in February with their own outbreaks. Soon, the virus was in all continents and over 177 countries, and as of this writing, the United States has the highest number of confirmed cases and, sadly, the most deaths. The virus was extremely contagious and led to death in the most vulnerable, particularly those older than 60 and those with underlying conditions. The most critical cases led to an overwhelming number being admitted into the intensive care units of hospitals, leading to a concern that the virus would overwhelm local health care systems. Today, in early May 2020, there have been nearly 250,000 deaths worldwide, with over 3,500,000 confirmed cases ( Hopkins, 2020 ). The human toll is staggering, and experts are predicting a second wave in summer or fall.

As the deaths rose from the virus that had no known treatment or vaccine countries shut their borders, banned travel to other countries and began to issue orders for their citizens to stay at home, with no gatherings of more than 10 individuals. Schools and universities closed their physical locations and moved education online. Sporting events were canceled, airlines cut flights, tourism evaporated, restaurants, movie theaters and bars closed, theater productions canceled, manufacturing facilities, services, and retail stores closed. In some businesses and industries, employees have been able to work remotely from home, but in others, workers have been laid off, furloughed, or had their hours cut. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there was a 4.5% reduction in hours in the first quarter of 2020, and 10.5% reduction is expected in the second quarter ( ILO, 2020a ). The latter is equivalent to 305 million jobs ( ILO, 2020a ).

Globally, over 430 million enterprises are at risk of disruption, with about half of those in the wholesale and retail trades ( ILO, 2020a ). Much focus in the press has been on the impact in Europe and North America, but the effect on developing countries is even more critical. An example of the latter is the Bangladeshi ready-made-garment sector ( Leitheiser et al., 2020 ), a global industry that depends on a supply chain of raw material from a few countries and produces those garments for retail stores throughout North America and Europe. But, in January 2020, raw material from China was delayed by the shutdown in China, creating delays and work stoppages in Bangladesh. By the time Bangladeshi factories had the material to make garments, in March, retailers in Europe and North American began to cancel orders or put them on hold, canceling or delaying payment. Factories shut down and workers were laid off without pay. Nearly a million people lost their jobs. Overall, since February 2020, the factories in Bangladesh have lost nearly 3 billion dollars in revenue. And, the retail stores that would have sold the garments have also closed. This demonstrates the ripple effect of the disruption of one industry that affects multiple countries and sets of workers, because consider that, in turn, there will be less raw material needed from China, and fewer workers needed there. One need only multiply this example by hundreds to consider the global impact of COVID-19 across the world of work.

The ILO (2020b) notes that it is difficult to collect employment statistics from different countries, so a total global unemployment rate is unavailable at this time. However, they predict significant increase in unemployment, and the number of individuals filing for unemployment benefits in the United States may be an indicator of the magnitude of those unemployed. In the United States, over 30 million filed for unemployment between March 11 and April 30 ( Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 ), effectively this is an unemployment rate of 18%. By contrast, in February 2020, the US unemployment rate was 3.5% ( Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 ).

Clearly, COVID-19 has had an enormous disruption on work and workers, most critically for those who have lost their employment. But, even for those continuing to work, there have been disruptions in where people work, with whom they work, what they do, and how much they earn. And, as of this writing, it is also a time of great uncertainty, as countries are slowly trying to ease restrictions to allow people to go back to work--- in a “new normal”, without the ability to predict if they can prevent further infectious “spikes”. The anxieties about not knowing what is coming, when it will end, or what work will entail led us to develop this set of essays about future research on COVID-19 and its impact on work and workers.

These essays began with an idea by Associate Editor Jos Akkermans, who noted to me that the global pandemic was creating a set of career shocks for workers. He suggested writing an essay for the Journal . The Journal of Vocational Behavior has not traditionally published essays, but these are such unusual times, and COVID-19 is so relevant to our collective research on work that I thought it was a good idea. I issued an invitation to the Associate Editors to submit a brief (3000 word) essay on the implications of COVID-19 on work and/or workers with an emphasis on research in the area. At the same time, a group of international scholars was coming together to consider the effects of COVID-19 on unemployment in several countries, and I invited that group to contribute an essay, as well ( Blustein et al., 2020 ).

The following are a set of nine thoughtful set of papers on how the COVID-19 could (and perhaps will) affect vocational behavior; they all provide suggestions for future research. Akkermans, Richardson, and Kraimer (2020) explore how the pandemic may be a career shock for many, but also how that may not necessarily be a negative experience. Blustein et al. (2020) focus on global unemployment, also acknowledging the privileged status they have as professors studying these phenomena. Cho examines the effect of the pandemic on micro-boundaries (across domains) as well as across national (macro) boundaries ( Cho, 2020 ). Guan, Deng, and Zhou (2020) drawing from cultural psychology, discuss how cultural orientations shape an individual's response to COVID-19, but also how a national cultural perspective influences collective actions. Kantamneni (2020) emphasized the effects on marginalized populations in the United States, as well as the very real effects of racism for Asians and Asian-Americans in the US. Kramer and Kramer (2020) discuss the impact of the pandemic in the perceptions of various occupations, whether perceptions of “good” and “bad” jobs will change and whether working remotely will permanently change where people will want to work. Restubog, Ocampo, and Wang (2020) also focused on individual's responses to the global crisis, concentrating on emotional regulation as a challenge, with suggestions for better managing the stress surrounding the anxiety of uncertainty. Rudolph and Zacher (2020) cautioned against using a generational lens in research, advocating for a lifespan developmental approach. Spurk and Straub (2020) also review issues related to unemployment, but focus on the impact of COVID-19 specifically on “gig” or flexible work arrangements.

I am grateful for the contributions of these groups of scholars, and proud of their ability to write these. They were able to write constructive essays in a short time frame when they were, themselves, dealing with disruptions at work. Some were home-schooling children, some were worried about an absent partner or a vulnerable loved one, some were struggling with the challenges that Restubog et al. (2020) outlined. I hope the thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations in these essays will help to stimulate productive thought on the effect of COVID-19 on work and workers. And, while, I hope this research spurs to better understand the effects of such shocks on work, I really hope we do not have to cope with such a shock again.

Akkermans J., Richardson J., Kraimer M. The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock: Implications for careers and vocational behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Blustein D.L., Duffy R., Ferreira J.A., Cohen-Scali V., Cinamon R.G., Allan B.A. Unemployment in the time of COVID-19: A research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020). Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. Retrieved May 6, 2020 from https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost .
Cho E. Examining boundaries to understand the impact of COVID-19 on vocational behaviors. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Guan Y., Deng H., Zhou X. Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on career development: Insights from cultural psychology. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Johns Hopkins (2020) Coronavirus Outbreak Mapped: Retrieved May 5, 2020 from https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html .
International Labor Organization ILO monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work. Third edition updated estimates and analysis. 2020. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_743146.pdf Retrieved May 5, 2020 from:
International Labor Organization (2020b) COVID-19 impact on the collection of labour market statistics. Retrieved May 6, 2020 from: https://ilostat.ilo.org .
Kantamneni, N. (2020). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on marginalized populations in the United States: A research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 119 . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
Kramer A., Kramer K.Z. The potential impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on occupational status, work from home, and occupational mobility. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Leitheiser, E., Hossain, S.N., Shuvro, S., Tasnim, G., Moon, J., Knudsen, J.S., & Rahman, S. (2020). Early impacts of coronavirus on Bangladesh apparel supply chains. https://www.cbs.dk/files/cbs.dk/risc_report_-_impacts_of_coronavirus_on_bangladesh_rmg_1.pdf .
Restubog S.L.D., Ocampo A.C., Wang L. Taking control amidst the Chaos: Emotion regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Rudolph C.W., Zacher H. COVID-19 and careers: On the futility of generational explanations. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Spurk D., Straub C. Flexible employment relationships and careers in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
World Health Organization (2020). World Health Organization Coronavirus Update. Retrieved May 5, 2020 from: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 .

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‘When Normal Life Stopped’: College Essays Reflect a Turbulent Year

This year’s admissions essays became a platform for high school seniors to reflect on the pandemic, race and loss.

By Anemona Hartocollis

This year perhaps more than ever before, the college essay has served as a canvas for high school seniors to reflect on a turbulent and, for many, sorrowful year. It has been a psychiatrist’s couch, a road map to a more hopeful future, a chance to pour out intimate feelings about loneliness and injustice.

In response to a request from The New York Times, more than 900 seniors submitted the personal essays they wrote for their college applications. Reading them is like a trip through two of the biggest news events of recent decades: the devastation wrought by the coronavirus, and the rise of a new civil rights movement.

In the wake of the high-profile deaths of Black people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police officers, students shared how they had wrestled with racism in their own lives. Many dipped their feet into the politics of protest, finding themselves strengthened by their activism, yet sometimes conflicted.

And in the midst of the most far-reaching pandemic in a century, they described the isolation and loss that have pervaded every aspect of their lives since schools suddenly shut down a year ago. They sought to articulate how they have managed while cut off from friends and activities they had cultivated for years.

To some degree, the students were responding to prompts on the applications, with their essays taking on even more weight in a year when many colleges waived standardized test scores and when extracurricular activities were wiped out.

This year the Common App, the nation’s most-used application, added a question inviting students to write about the impact of Covid-19 on their lives and educations. And universities like Notre Dame and Lehigh invited applicants to write about their reactions to the death of George Floyd, and how that inspired them to make the world a better place.

The coronavirus was the most common theme in the essays submitted to The Times, appearing in 393 essays, more than 40 percent. Next was the value of family, coming up in 351 essays, but often in the context of other issues, like the pandemic and race. Racial justice and protest figured in 342 essays.

“We find with underrepresented populations, we have lots of people coming to us with a legitimate interest in seeing social justice established, and they are looking to see their college as their training ground for that,” said David A. Burge, vice president for enrollment management at George Mason University.

Family was not the only eternal verity to appear. Love came up in 286 essays; science in 128; art in 110; music in 109; and honor in 32. Personal tragedy also loomed large, with 30 essays about cancer alone.

Some students resisted the lure of current events, and wrote quirky essays about captaining a fishing boat on Cape Cod or hosting dinner parties. A few wrote poetry. Perhaps surprisingly, politics and the 2020 election were not of great interest.

Most students expect to hear where they were admitted by the end of March or beginning of April. Here are excerpts from a few of the essays, edited for length.

Nandini Likki

Nandini, a senior at the Seven Hills School in Cincinnati, took care of her father after he was hospitalized with Covid-19. It was a “harrowing” but also rewarding time, she writes.

When he came home, my sister and I had to take care of him during the day while my mom went to work. We cooked his food, washed his dishes, and excessively cleaned the house to make sure we didn’t get the disease as well.

It was an especially harrowing time in my life and my mental health suffered due to the amount of stress I was under.

However, I think I grew emotionally and matured because of the experience. My sister and I became more responsible as we took on more adult roles in the family. I grew even closer to my dad and learned how to bond with him in different ways, like using Netflix Party to watch movies together. Although the experience isolated me from most of my friends who couldn’t relate to me, my dad’s illness taught me to treasure my family even more and cherish the time I spend with them.

Nandini has been accepted at Case Western and other schools.

Grace Sundstrom

Through her church in Des Moines, Grace, a senior at Roosevelt High School, began a correspondence with Alden, a man who was living in a nursing home and isolated by the pandemic.

As our letters flew back and forth, I decided to take a chance and share my disgust about the treatment of people of color at the hands of police officers. To my surprise, Alden responded with the same sentiments and shared his experience marching in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Here we were, two people generations apart, finding common ground around one of the most polarizing subjects in American history.

When I arrived at my first Black Lives Matter protest this summer, I was greeted by the voices of singing protesters. The singing made me think of a younger Alden, stepping off the train at Union Station in Washington, D.C., to attend the 1963 March on Washington.

Grace has been admitted to Trinity University in San Antonio and is waiting to hear from others.

Ahmed AlMehri

Ahmed, who attends the American School of Kuwait, wrote of growing stronger through the death of his revered grandfather from Covid-19.

Fareed Al-Othman was a poet, journalist and, most importantly, my grandfather. Sept. 8, 2020, he fell victim to Covid-19. To many, he’s just a statistic — one of the “inevitable” deaths. But to me, he was, and continues to be, an inspiration. I understand the frustration people have with the restrictions, curfews, lockdowns and all of the tertiary effects of these things.

But I, personally, would go through it all a hundred times over just to have my grandfather back.

For a long time, things felt as if they weren’t going to get better. Balancing the grief of his death, school and the upcoming college applications was a struggle; and my stress started to accumulate. Covid-19 has taken a lot from me, but it has forced me to grow stronger and persevere. I know my grandfather would be disappointed if I had let myself use his death as an excuse to slack off.

Ahmed has been accepted by the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Miami and is waiting to hear from others.

Mina Rowland

Mina, who lives in a shelter in San Joaquin County, Calif., wrote of becoming homeless in middle school.

Despite every day that I continue to face homelessness, I know that I have outlets for my pain and anguish.

Most things that I’ve had in life have been destroyed, stolen, lost, or taken, but art and poetry shall be with me forever.

The stars in “Starry Night” are my tenacity and my hope. Every time I am lucky enough to see the stars, I am reminded of how far I’ve come and how much farther I can go.

After taking a gap year, Mina and her twin sister, Mirabell, have been accepted at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and are waiting on others.

Christine Faith Cabusay

Christine, a senior at Stuyvesant High School in New York, decided to break the isolation of the pandemic by writing letters to her friends.

How often would my friends receive something in the mail that was not college mail, a bill, or something they ordered online? My goal was to make opening a letter an experience. I learned calligraphy and Spencerian script so it was as if an 18th-century maiden was writing to them from her parlor on a rainy day.

Washing lines in my yard held an ever-changing rainbow of hand-recycled paper.

With every letter came a painting of something that I knew they liked: fandoms, animals, music, etc. I sprayed my favorite perfume on my signature on every letter because I read somewhere that women sprayed perfume on letters overseas to their partners in World War II; it made writing letters way more romantic (even if it was just to my close friends).

Christine is still waiting to hear from schools.

Alexis Ihezue

Her father’s death from complications of diabetes last year caused Alexis, a student at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology in Lawrenceville, Ga., to consider the meaning of love.

And in the midst of my grief swallowing me from the inside out, I asked myself when I loved him most, and when I knew he loved me. It’s nothing but brief flashes, like bits and pieces of a dream. I hear him singing “Fix You” by Coldplay on our way home, his hands across the table from me at our favorite wing spot that we went to weekly after school, him driving me home in the middle of a rainstorm, his last message to me congratulating me on making it to senior year.

It’s me finding a plastic spoon in the sink last week and remembering the obnoxious way he used to eat. I see him in bursts and flashes.

A myriad of colors and experiences. And I think to myself, ‘That’s what it is.’ It’s a second. It’s a minute. That’s what love is. It isn’t measured in years, but moments.

Alexis has been accepted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is waiting on others.

Ivy Wanjiku

She and her mother came to America “with nothing but each other and $100,” writes Ivy, who was born in Kenya and attends North Cobb High School in Kennesaw, Ga.

I am a triple threat. Foreign, black, female. From the dirt roads and dust that covered the attire of my ancestors who worshiped the soil, I have sprouted new beginnings for generations.

But the question arises; will that generation live to see its day?

Melanin mistaken as a felon, my existence is now a hashtag that trends as often as my rights, a facade at best, a lie in truth. I now know more names of dead blacks than I do the amendments of the Constitution.

Ivy is going to Emory University in Atlanta on full scholarship and credits her essay with helping her get in.

Mary Clare Marshall

The isolation of the pandemic became worse when Mary Clare, a student at Sacred Heart Greenwich in Connecticut, realized that her mother had cancer.

My parents acted like everything was normal, but there were constant reminders of her diagnosis. After her first chemo appointment, I didn’t acknowledge the change. It became real when she came downstairs one day without hair.

No one said anything about the change. It just happened. And it hit me all over again. My mom has cancer.

Even after going to Catholic school for my whole life, I couldn’t help but be angry at God. I felt myself experiencing immense doubt in everything I believe in. Unable to escape my house for any small respite, I felt as though I faced the reality of my mom’s cancer totally alone.

Mary Clare has been admitted to the University of Virginia and is waiting on other schools.

Nora Frances Kohnhorst

Nora, a student at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College in New York, was always “a serial dabbler,” but found commitment in a common pandemic hobby.

In March, when normal life stopped, I took up breadmaking. This served a practical purpose. The pandemic hit my neighborhood in Queens especially hard, and my parents were afraid to go to the store. This forced my family to come up with ways to avoid shopping. I decided I would learn to make sourdough using recipes I found online. Initially, some loaves fell flat, others were too soft inside, and still more spread into strange blobs.

I reminded myself that the bread didn’t need to be perfect, just edible.

It didn’t matter what it looked like; there was no one to see or eat it besides my brother and parents. They depended on my new activity, and that dependency prevented me from repeating the cycle of trying a hobby, losing steam, and moving on to something new.

Nora has been admitted to SUNY Binghamton and the University of Vermont and is waiting to hear from others.

Gracie Yong Ying Silides

Gracie, a student at Greensboro Day School in North Carolina, recalls the “red thread” of a Chinese proverb and wonders where it will take her next.

Destiny has led me into a mysterious place these last nine months: isolation. At a time in my life when I am supposed to be branching out, the Covid pandemic seems to have trimmed those branches back to nubs. I have had to research colleges without setting foot on them. I’ve introduced myself to strangers through essays, videos, and test scores.

I would have fallen apart over this if it weren’t for my faith.

In Hebrews 11:1, Paul says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” My life has shown me that the red thread of destiny guides me where I need to go. Though it might sound crazy, I trust that the red thread is guiding me to the next phase of my journey.

Gracie has been accepted to St. Olaf College, Ithaca College and others.

Levi, a student at Westerville Central High School in Ohio, wrestles with the conflict between her admiration for her father, a police officer, and the negative image of the police.

Since I was a small child I have watched my father put on his dark blue uniform to go to work protecting and serving others. He has always been my hero. As the African-American daughter of a police officer, I believe in what my father stands for, and I am so proud of him because he is not only my protector, but the protector of those I will likely never know. When I was young, I imagined him always being a hero to others, just as he was to me. How could anyone dislike him??? However, as I have gotten older and watched television and social media depict the brutalization of African-Americans, at the hands of police, I have come to a space that is uncomfortable.

I am certain there are others like me — African-Americans who love their police officer family members, yet who despise what the police are doing to African-Americans.

I know that I will not be able to rectify this problem alone, but I want to be a part of the solution where my paradox no longer exists.

Levi has been accepted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and is waiting to hear from others.

Henry Thomas Egan

When Henry, a student at Creighton Preparatory School in Omaha, attended a protest after the death of George Floyd, it was the words of a Nina Simone song that stayed with him.

I had never been to a protest before; neither my school, nor my family, nor my city are known for being outspoken. Thousands lined the intersection in all four directions, chanting, “He couldn’t breathe! George Floyd couldn’t breathe!”

In my head, thoughts of hunger, injustice, and silence swirled around.

In my ears, I heard lyrics playing on a speaker nearby, a song by Nina Simone: “To be young, gifted, and Black!” The experience was exceptionally sad and affirming and disorienting at the same time, and when the police arrived and started firing tear gas, I left. A lot has happened in my life over these last four years. I am left not knowing how to sort all of this out and what paths I should follow.

Henry has not yet heard back from colleges.

Anna Valades

Anna, a student at Coronado High School in California, pondered how children learned racism from their parents.

“She said I wasn’t invited to her birthday party because I was black,” my sister had told my mom, devastated, after coming home from third grade as the only classmate who had not been invited to the party. Although my sister is not black, she is a dark-skinned Mexican, and brown-skinned people in Mexico are thought of as being a lower class and commonly referred to as “negros.” When my mom found out who had been discriminating against my sister, she later informed me that the girl’s mother had also bullied my mom about her skin tone when she was in elementary school in Mexico City.

Through this situation, I learned the impact people’s upbringing and the values they are taught at home have on their beliefs and, therefore, their actions.

Anna has been accepted at Northeastern University and is waiting to hear from others.

Research was contributed by Asmaa Elkeurti, Aidan Gardiner, Pierre-Antoine Louis and Jake Frankenfield.

Anemona Hartocollis is a national correspondent, covering higher education. She is also the author of the book, “Seven Days of Possibilities: One Teacher, 24 Kids, and the Music That Changed Their Lives Forever.” More about Anemona Hartocollis

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Open access
Published: 07 November 2023

Social virtual reality helps to reduce feelings of loneliness and social anxiety during the Covid-19 pandemic

Keith Kenyon ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5084-9024 1 ,
Vitalia Kinakh 2 &
Jacqui Harrison 1

Scientific Reports volume 13 , Article number: 19282 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Human behaviour
Quality of life

Evidence shows that the Covid-19 pandemic caused increased loneliness, anxiety and greater social isolation due to social distancing policies. Virtual reality (VR) provides users with an easy way to become engaged in social activities without leaving the house. This study focused on adults, who were socialising in Altspace VR, a social VR platform, during the Covid-19 pandemic and it explored whether social VR could alleviate feelings of loneliness and social anxiety. A mixed-methods research design was applied. Participants (n = 74), aged 18–75, completed a questionnaire inside the social VR platform to measure levels of loneliness (UCLA 20-item scale) and social anxiety (17-item SPIN scale) in the social VR platform (online condition) and real world (offline condition). Subsequently, a focus group (n = 9) was conducted to gather insights into how and why participants were using the social VR platform. Findings from the questionnaire revealed significantly lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety when in the social VR platform. Lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety were also associated with participants who socialised with a regular group of friends. In addition, findings from the focus group suggested that being part of an online group facilitates stronger feelings of belonging. Social VR can be used as a valuable intervention to reduce feelings of loneliness and social anxiety. Future studies should continue to establish whether social VR can help to encourage group formation and provide people with enhanced social opportunities beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions

Loneliness trajectories over three decades are associated with conspiracist worldviews in midlife

Mechanisms linking social media use to adolescent mental health vulnerability

Introduction.

On the 11th March 2020 the World Health Organisation declared the rapidly spreading Corona virus outbreak a pandemic 1 and world governments began to impose enforced social isolation rules. Throughout 2020/2021 the majority of countries imposed lengthy periods of lockdown. The first UK lockdown lasted almost 4 months and during this time only essential travel was permitted and interaction with others from outside the direct household was forbidden 2 . The lock-down caused disruption to daily routines, social activities, education and work. Social distancing measures led to a collapse in social contact. When people experience a reduction in social contact or when the quality of interaction with others is diminished, they can suffer feelings of loneliness. Nearly 7.5 million adults experienced "lockdown loneliness," which is the equivalent to around 14% of the population. 3 Additionally, the percentage of the UK population reporting loneliness increased from 10% in March 2020 to 26% in February 2021 4 .

Social isolation and loneliness

Social isolation and loneliness are different. Social isolation is commonly defined as “the state in which the individual or group expresses a need or desire for contact with others but is unable to make that contact” 5 , p. 731 . Social isolation can occur due to quarantine or physical separation. Due to quarantine measures enforced during lockdown, people faced involuntary social isolation or at least a reduction in their social interactions to the point that their social network was quantitatively diminished 6 . Loneliness is a subjective experience that arises when a person feels that they are isolated and deprived of companionship, lack a sense of belonging, or that their social interactions with others are diminished in either quantity or quality 7 .

Social isolation, loneliness and detrimental implications for physical and mental health

The rise of loneliness during lockdown also increased the prevalence of anxiety 3 and such health problems as depressive symptoms and insomnia, reconfirming findings from earlier research 8 that explored the relationship between social isolation and loneliness and the effect it has on our physical and mental health. Loneliness can lead to stress and high blood pressure, a sedentary or less active lifestyle, and a reduction in cognitive function 9 , 10 , 11 . Loneliness can also lead to less healthy behaviours e.g. an increase in alcohol consumption and smoking 12 , a poor diet 13 and poor sleeping patterns 14 . Loneliness has been found to have an impact on a person’s social wellbeing leading to feelings of low self-esteem and worthlessness as well as increased anxiety and decreased levels of happiness, resulting in depression 11 , 15 , 16 , 17 .

Technology-based interventions to reduce social isolation and loneliness

Within the last decade several systematic reviews have focused on technology-based interventions for people who are experiencing or who are at risk of experiencing loneliness and social isolation 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 . Masi et al. 18 in their meta-analysis, explored the efficacy of technology-based vs non-technology-based interventions across all population groups, notably, the mean size effect for technology-based interventions was − 1.04 (N = 6; 95% CI − 1.68, − 0.40; p < 0.01), as opposed to − 0.21 (N = 12; 95% CI − 0.43, 0.01; p = 0.05) for non-technology-based interventions. Choi et al. 19 reported a significant pooled reduction in loneliness in older adults after implementing technology-based interventions (Z = 2.085, p = 0.037). Early technology-based interventions consisted of conference calls/video conferencing, text-based Inter Relay Chat and Emails 18 , 19 , 20 . Subsequent systematic reviews 21 , 22 found that video conferencing was able to reduce loneliness in older particpants, however, this technology only helped to facilitate communication between existing, rather than new contacts. These types of intervention are therefore less beneficial for individuals who are socially isolated and struggling to establish connections with others.

During the Covid-19 lockdowns there was no possibility to provide or continue providing face-to-face individual or group interventions for lonely people. Moreover, even non-lonely people found themselves in situations where they could not maintain their social relationships through face-to-face interactions. Thus, the Department of Primary Care and Public Health in England recommended that avenues for mitigating feelings of loneliness should look to include web- and smartphone-based interventions 23 .

Virtual reality (VR) using a head mounted display (HMD) is considered qualitatively different from other technologies in that it has the ability to provide a sensation of immersiveness or ‘being there’ 24 . VR technologies are becoming more accessible and comfortable with the creation of lighter more portable HMDs at a more affordable cost. This allows the technology to be used by a greater range of adults and members of vulnerable groups, e.g. adults with mobility impairments and older adults with age-related impairments. VR users, often represented as avatars, are able to meet and communicate in real-time with each other within a range of different scenarios. People are able to participate in social activities with new people, e.g. venturing off into new and exciting worlds (with nature scenes) 24 , travelling to different destinations around the world 25 , 26 without leaving their homes and escaping their confined realties or engaging in horticultural therapeutic interactions 27 . Older adults are able to engage in social networking activities, including playing games with other people and attending family events through VR, users spoke very positively and expressed visible signs of enjoyment about their experience 28 , 29 , 30 . Virtual gaming is very popular among younger users with 31 , 32 reporting that players experience significantly lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety when playing VR games compared within the real world.

Users taking part in VR interventions report being less socailly isolated, show less signs of depression, and demonstrate greater levels of overal well-being 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 33 , 34 . Widow(er)s in a VR support group showed a significant improvement during an 8-week intervention 35 . While both systematic reviews 33 , 34 reported useful insights regarding the positive impact of VR technology on loneliness, most studies on VR environments included a small number of participants from specific populations, thus the reported findings have limited generalisability.

When VR is used as an intervention to reduce social and public speaking anxiety, it is found to be most effective as a mode of delivery for alternative therapeutic interventions such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy 36 . Furthermore, Kim et al. 37 found that patients with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) benefitted from the use of VR as an intervention, evidenced by short-term neuronal changes during exposure. They concluded that VR is useful as a first intervention for SAD patients who are unable to access formal treatment.

Various social VR platforms have emerged since 2013, e.g. VRChat, Altspace VR and RecRoom, however, the use of social VR as an intervention for reducing social isolation and loneliness is still a relatively new and unexplored field. Therefore, whilst there is research to support the effectiveness of VR as a tool to deliver therapeutic interventions and improve social well-being, there is limited research on the use of social VR as an online mechanism to decrease social isolation and improve group belonging.

Innovation and contributions of this study

The current study is a cross-sectional study of the general population, socially isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic and who were using social VR platforms to interact with each other. This study addresses the limitations of previous studies, which have focused exclusively on specific groups within the population, i.e. older adults or VR gamers, or explored general well-being rather that loneliness and social anxiety. In previous studies the HMDs were often provided by the research team, meaning that there was a time restrain (frequency or length) in relation to the use of the VR technology by participants. This study is novel as it explores the effects of loneliness and social anxiety on a wider demographic of people, who have unrestricted access to HMDs and have been socialising in Altspace VR during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study is of an international character and utilises a mixed methods approach to explore the benefits of social VR to help reduce feelings of loneliness and social anxiety and to provide additional means by which social contact can be enhanced for vulnerable populations who may remain isolated post-pandemic.

Research hypotheses

The following hypotheses were explored:

Lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety are experienced when participants are in the social VR platform (online) compared with in the real-world condition (offline).

Lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety are experienced by participants who are part of a group in social VR, i.e. members of a Virtual Social Group (VSG), than those who are not.

Lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety are experienced by participants who have a group of friends in the social VR in comparison with those who do not.

Lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety are experienced by participants who spend greater amounts of time in social VR.

The study used a convergent parallel mixed-methods research design 38 to collect both diverse quantitative and qualitative data (see Fig. 1 ). The study complied will relevant ethical regulations and was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Bolton, UK. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

A convergent parallel mixed-methods model of the current research.

Collection of quantitative data

Participants.

Participants were required to be English speaking, over the age of 18 and users of Altspace VR. A message of invitation was posted on different Discord community channels/message boards: Official Altspace VR; Educators In VR; Spatial Network; Humanism; Computer Science in VR; VR Church. 87 participants were recruited via an opportunity sampling method.

Materials and measures

A private research room was created inside Altspace VR to ensure that participants were able to complete the questionnaire undisturbed (see Fig. 5 ). The online questionnaire was created in Qualtrics XM and could be accessed across multiple devices: Oculus Quest, Oculus GO, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PC. The online questionnaire included sections about demographics, details of Altspace VR usage and sections assessing participant’s subjective feelings of loneliness and social anxiety. Measures of loneliness and social anxiety were collected for both conditions—real world (offline condition), followed by social VR (online condition).

The UCLA Loneliness Scale version 3 39 was used to measure the subjective level of loneliness. This 20-item self-reporting questionnaire uses a four-point Likert scale, with 0 = “Never”, 1 = “Rarely”, 2 = “Sometimes”, 3 = “Often”. The loneliness score for each participant (range from 0 to 60) was determined as the sum of responses to all 20 items—higher scores reflecting greater loneliness. The UCLA Loneliness scale was adapted to include the word Altspace in the online condition as it was felt that this would further help participants to focus specifically on the online experience. No further adaptations were made to this questionnaire. The Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) scale 40 was used to measure the subjective level of social anxiety as it is effective in measuring the severity of social anxiety. This 17-item self-reporting questionnaire uses a five-point Likert scale, with 0 = “Not at all”, 1 = "A little”, 2 = “Somewhat”, 3 = “Very much”, 4 = “Extremely”. Adding the scores from each item produced a SPIN score for each participant. A higher SPIN score indicates more severe symptoms of social anxiety. No adaptations were made to the SPIN questionnaire.

Participants who were interested in taking part in the survey were taken to the research room inside Altspace VR where they were sent a message with a link to the online questionnaire. Participants who clicked on the link were then presented with a browser window inside the room that only they could see. Participants who opened the questionnaire were first presented with the participant information sheet giving full details of the study. Information regarding withdrawal from the study and a list of additional support services were also provided in line with the University of Bolton’s ethical guidelines. After reading the study information sheet, participants were presented with the consent form for which full consent was required before they were able to move onto the survey.

The strategy for dealing with incomplete cases was to remove any participants who did not answer all of the questions, thus analysis was conducted on 74 participants. Exported data from the Qualtrics system was imported into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS, version 25). A Kolmogorov–Smirnov test ( p > 0.5) was carried out to test for a normal distribution and histograms, nominal Q-Q plots and box plots were used to identify any outliers. Two outliers were found in the data for Social Anxiety in the offline condition and these were replaced with the mean of 17.54 .

Characteristics of the sample

Of the total sample (n = 74), 46 were males and 28 females. The age range of respondents was 18–75 years (the split of valid participants is shown in Table 1 ). Participants were recruited globally (the geographical demographic is shown in Fig. 2 ). Out of these 74 participants, 31 participants (15 males, 16 females) were new to Altspace VR, having joined Altspace VR during the Covid-19 pandemic. 43 participants indicated that they had used Altspace VR before the outbreak of Covid-19.

Participant’s location.

Change in loneliness and social anxiety

Figure 3 shows the breakdown of social anxiety scores in both the online and offline conditions. The data shows that the severity of social anxiety is higher in the offline condition, whereas participant’s levels of anxiety reduce when they are online.

Participant’s SPIN Scores.

The UCLA loneliness scale uses continuous scoring and so it is not possible to provide a similar breakdown for participant’s levels of loneliness. The effect that social VR has on the participant will be discussed in greater detail later.

It was anticipated that during the Covid-19 pandemic and as a direct result of social distancing rules being imposed that general usage in Altspace VR would increase. Figure 4 shows that 76% of participants felt that their usage had increased and after calculating the average difference in usage (before and during Covid-19) an average increase per user of 11 h per week was reported.

Participants usage of Altspace VR since Covid-19.

Hypothesis 1

Hypothesis 1 predicted lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety are experienced when participants are in social VR (online) compared with in the real-world condition (offline) A paired-samples t-test was carried out to compare online (inside social VR) and offline (real-world) conditions for both loneliness and social anxiety. The results in Table 2 demonstrate a statistically significant decrease in the scores for loneliness from the offline condition (M = 20.53, SD = 14.80) to the online condition (M = 16.32, SD = 11.04), t = − 2.573, p < 0.05. A statistically significant decrease in social anxiety was found in the offline condition (M = 23.01, SD = 16.65) compared to the online condition (M = 16.34, SD = 13.09), t = − 5.80, p < 0.05. A small to moderate effect size 41 was found for both variables (i.e. d loneliness = 0.32 and d social anxiety = 0.45).

Hypotheses 2, 3 and 4

H2 predicted that lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety are experienced by participants who are part of a group in social VR than those who are not.

Being a member of a VSG means that the participant meets with a group or number of groups on a regular basis to take part in scheduled events, e.g. regular church services for members of VR Church; discussions around education each week for members of Educators in VR; mediation and relaxation sessions for members of the EvolVR group; and discussions on a whole range of matters relating to life in the Humanism group. 75.7% of participants (n = 56) indicated that they were a member of a VSG and 24.3% (n = 18) were not affiliated with any groups.

A one-way between participants ANOVA was carried out to compare the effect of being a member of a VSG separately for each of the dependent variables. No significant effect was found for loneliness in both the online condition F(1,72) = 0.17, p = 0.68 and offline condition F(1,72) = 1.63, p = 0.20. No significant effect was found for social anxiety in the online condition F(1,72) = 2.22, p = 0.14, however, a significant effect was found for social anxiety in the offline condition F(1,72) = 4.23, p < 0.05, η 2 = 0.06 (a medium effect size). This finding suggests that participants who are part of a VSG experience less social anxiety (M = 20.80, SD = 15.64) than those who are not (M = 29.89, SD = 18.26) when in the real world (offline) condition.

H3 predicted that lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety are experienced by participants who have a group of friends in social VR in comparison with those who do not. This differs from Hypothesis 2 in that having friends in Altspace VR is seen as a deeper connection than simply taking part in group events where connections may not have been formed. Participants were grouped on whether they have a circle of friends in social VR with whom they regularly socialise with (52.7%, n = 39) and not (47.3%, n = 35).

A one-way between participants ANOVA was carried out to compare the effect of having a circle of friends separately for each of the dependent variables. A significant effect was found for loneliness in the online condition F(1,72) = 6.75, p < 0.05, η 2 = 0.08 (a medium effect size), whereas no significant effect was found for loneliness in the offline condition F(1,72) = 0.03, p = 0.86. This suggests that participants who have a circle of online friends experience less loneliness (M = 13.28, SD = 11.02) than those who do not (M = 19.71, SD = 10.17). A significant effect was found for social anxiety in both the online condition F(1,72) = 6.82, p < 0.05, η 2 = 0.09 (a medium effect size) and offline condition F(1,72) = 9.18, p < 0.01, η 2 = 0.11 (a large effect size). This suggests that participants who have a circle of online friends experience less social anxiety (M = 12.72, SD = 12.64) than those who do not (M = 20.37, SD = 12.54) in both online and offline conditions.

H4 predicted that lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety are experienced by participants who spend greater amounts of time in social VR. There was a reasonable balance of participants who have been members of Altspace VR for more than 6 months prior to (n = 43) and who joined during (n = 31) the Covid-19 pandemic.

A one-way between participants ANOVA shows a significant effect for loneliness in the online condition F(1,72) = 4.68, p < 0.05, η 2 = 0.06 (a medium effect size), whereas no significant effect was found for loneliness in the offline condition F(1,72) = 0.08, p = 0.93. This suggests that participants who have been members of Altspace VR for more than 6 months experienced less loneliness (M = 14.02, SD = 11.63) than those who joined during the Covid-19 pandemic (M = 19.52, SD = 09.43). No significant effect was found for social anxiety in the online condition F(1,72) = 2.13, p = 0.15, however, a significant effect was found for social anxiety in the offline condition F(1,72) = 4.77, p < 0.05, η 2 = 0.06 (a medium effect size). This suggests that participants who have been members of Altspace VR for more than 6 months experienced less social anxiety (M = 19.51, SD = 16.82) than those who recently joined (M = 27.87, SD = 15.38).

Discussion of quantitative results

Research into the use of web-based technologies and virtual worlds has consistently demonstrated positive effects of such interventions on an individual’s subjective feelings of loneliness and social anxiety. Hypothesis 1 of this study is therefore supported and is consistent with the earlier findings 31 , 32 , 42 , 43 and a recent review 44 .

The results of this study in relation to hypothesis 2 were unable to support the assumption that being part of a VSG will reduce feelings of loneliness. The study was therefore unable to support findings from 32 which reported that VR gamers who played as part of a guild were less likely to experience feelings of loneliness. Social identity theory 45 provides a possible explanation for this. Teaming up with a specific VR gaming guild with the common purpose of defeating an enemy for example exerts a stronger sense of identity and group attachment compared to belonging to multiple virtual social groups, where an individual could have several social identities, thus group attachment is less salient. Furthermore, group attachment takes time to develop and within Altspace VR new VSGs are being created all the time. Future studies should look to explore the relationship between the membership duration and the strength of group attachment and the effect this has on subjective feelings of loneliness.

The results of this study support hypothesis 3 in that participants, who have a circle of friends with who they regularly socialise in social VR, experience lower levels of loneliness and social anxiety. This is consistent with the findings of 32 who found that playing with known people helps to reduce feelings of loneliness and social anxiety. This also further supports the findings of 46 who found that half of participants considered their gamer friends to be comparable to their real-life friends. As pointed out by 47 in the Need to Belong Theory, people need frequent and meaningful interactions to feel fulfilled. The ability to form positive social interactions with people with which we feel most connected, i.e. a circle of friends that share our goals or with which we have a common purpose, promotes greater levels of satisfaction and generates greater feelings of belonginess, which in turn reduces our feelings of loneliness and social anxiety 48 .

The results of this study in relation to hypothesis 4 support the assumption that the longer a person has been in social VR the lower will be their feelings of loneliness. There was a significant reduction in feelings of loneliness in the online condition, but not in the offline condition. The explanation for the divergence is that both new and existing Altspace VR users were experiencing similarly high levels of loneliness in the real-world condition, due to the sudden enforced period of lockdown that was imposed upon them, and that whilst being in social VR for a longer period of time showed a greater reduction in feelings of loneliness, in the real world the length of time they had been using social VR was not significant. A possible explanation for this is that when returning to the real world a person is again faced with the challenges of the imposed social isolation and will therefore continue to experience greater levels of loneliness. The reverse situation was found for social anxiety with a significant reduction in social anxiety being found in the offline condition for participants who had been using social VR for longer. This is a useful finding because it shows that using social VR for longer periods of time can help to reduce feelings of social anxiety in the real world. As is suggested by 42 social VR can be used to build up social capital and thereby help to improve a person’s social skills in the real world.

Focus group

Nine participants (6 male, 3 female) who took part in the online questionnaire were later recruited to take part in a focus group. The demographics of this group are shown in Table 3 . The focus group was made up of a wide mix of people from around the world. Participants were a mix of educators, students, developers and other professionals. Four of the participants were new to Altspace VR, having joined during the Covid-19 pandemic, whilst five had been in Altspace VR for more than 6 months. All the participants had previously attended at least one Educators in VR research event.

The focus group study took place in a private research room inside of Altspace VR (see Fig. 5 ), purposely created by the researcher. Only selected participants were able to join this room via a portal link provided by the researcher. The interview was recorded using OBS screen recording software on the researcher’s computer.

Virtual research room.

Prompts were kept to a minimum and questions were open-ended to elicit rich responses from participants. The focus group was later transcribed verbatim by the researcher. The transcript was analysed using a thematic data analysis approach as per the Braun and Clarke framework 49 . Thematic analysis is a suitable analytic approach to systematically establish patterns of meaning within qualitative data sets 50 . Microsoft Word was used to facilitate data management and the coding of themes. Participants’ responses were coded and themes identified.

Qualitative results

Four superordinate themes with several subordinate themes were identified (see Table 4 ).

Theme 1. Why the participant visits the social VR platform

Participants spoke freely about how they got involved in Altspace VR and what they believe to be the main reason they visit Altspace VR. Three sub-themes were discovered, although from the discussions it was clear that most, if not all, participants, valued the group interaction and attendance at events very highly.

Socialising in VR

What was interesting about the group of participants in the focus group was that they were all connected due to their involvement with the Educators in VR community and not through friendship ties. Some participants highlighted that they initially joined Altspace VR to meet new people and then started building a network of professional relationships.

Participant quotes from the transcripts are given within the results section for each subordinate theme. For confidentiality purposes quotes from participants will be referenced as: Participant (P), followed by a number 1–9 and the participant’s gender M (male), F (female) e.g. “P1M”.

“In VR I hang out with friends and of course the [Educators in VR] research team, but I don’t hang out around the campfire as much anymore” (31-33,P3F).

The campfire in Altspace VR is a meeting place for new users to mingle, chat and make friends. New users to Altspace VR tend to levitate towards the campfire until they establish friendship groups and events in which to take part in. This participant has already established a network of meaningful friendships and they are now spending less unstructured time in social zones.

All participants highlighted that they had seen an increase in their usage during the Covid-19 pandemic. The imposed restrictions on physical meetups led to several participants using social VR to meet with real-world friends to satisfy their social needs.

“During this pandemic I have probably come in an hour or two more per day. Part of that was to connect with some of my friends. I got some friends to start coming into Altspace VR so we were able actually hang out in Altspace” (52-55,P5F). “more recently, in the last month or so, because I work in the VR community and a lot of my personal friends have VR headsets, the people that I work with at the university, The people that are in my groups and in my sphere so to speak at the university are some of my best friends and so we have started having social meet-ups in VR for nothing other than social, like just for social meet-ups” (125-132,P1M)

Attending community events and learning new skills

All of the focus group participants recognised the value of taking part in regular events in social VR. In particular, participants were positive about the opportunities that exists within Altspace VR to collaborate with others to expand and learn new skills. Community involvement within Altspace VR generates a strong sense of belonging thus reducing feelings of loneliness and social anxiety.

“I got inspired by the Covid situation to host events, so it inspired me to bring people together. I think if the Covid situation did not happen I wouldn’t have organised these research meetings to be honest, so it was pretty much the catalyst to hosting events” (161-165,P3F) “One thing I love about the Altspace environment is the Educators forum because I have joined philosophy classes, I’ve done Psychology classes, I’ve really interacted. In fact, I started a talk show, [ ] my own event, and that’s one thing that I love about Altspace, so I do love this place” (72-78,P7M)

Sharing ideas with professionals and like-minded people

Altspace VR allows users to create their own events and to share knowledge with other users. There are a wide range of different interest groups within Altspace VR. Establishing common interests with others is a cornerstone to forming positive and meaningful relationships. Establishing a network of contacts is also beneficial by encouraging, giving advice and supporting each other in difficult times 51 . Several of the participants commented that social VR is a useful tool not least during periods of enforced social isolation, but also to those who find themselves unable to form such relationships within their existing real-world social networks.

“I entered Altspace mainly for the Educators in VR conference and after that, during the Covid crisis obviously I stayed because it is a perfect place to find people that have a similar interest with mine” (62-64,P6F). “It’s almost impossible where I live to find people with similar interests like mine, so this is probably the only way for me to find people with similar interests” (188-190,P6F) “I love coming here because there are so many truly brilliant people with so much to learn and so many interesting things to hear and see” (105-107,P9M)

Theme 2. How the participant sees their current situation

Although participants were not specifically asked, they took it upon themselves to reflect how they see the current situation and their specific circumstance in terms of being socially isolated. Participants felt that they were socially isolated and less social for several reasons. These have been broken down into the following sub-themes.

Introverted/anti-social

Several participants stated that they are socially inhibited and anxious individuals, who find socialising in the real world more challenging, whereas social VR offers a less intimidating way for them to meet and make friends.

“If you struggle with social interaction, VR is a little less intimidating, I would say. I really think these platforms are a great way to connect and less intimidating as well” (240-245,P3F) “Prior to Covid I was actually pretty like unsocial, I still kind of am unsocial, but it seems as though now society is kind of like bending towards introverts so in a sense it’s like the market’s benefiting my type so like in a sense I’m becoming increasingly more social” (18-22,P2M).

Socially isolated due to remote location and work/life balance

Some participants lamented that their geographic location or work/life balance in the real world made it very difficult for them to meet and to have frequent interactions with people with similar interests to theirs. This aspect makes them at a greater risk of loneliness to others. Social interaction within social VR is not restricted by geographic location and so these participants feel that this has helped to enhance their social interaction with others.

“I use VR to socialise because I live in a little village so for me it’s the only way to meet people, to communicate with people etc because normally I don’t meet people in the real life. With my friends and with my brother etc so I use the VR to socialise okay” (40-43,P4M) “I went on sabbatical in September this academic year I spent my entire summer, last year outside hiking and camping and all of that and then all of a sudden I was inside doing research and I was isolated from my community. I feel like my work community is my community, you know, and I felt like I lost my community and I felt like I found a new one in Altspace” (259-265,P1M)

Theme 3. How the participant sees the social VR platform

Several participants elaborated in detail on how they felt that social VR helped them to connect with people in ways that were better than alternative digital communication methods such as video conferencing, text chat or social media.

Greater immersion/presence

Immersion and presence are important characteristics within VR because the aim after all is to replicate, to some degree, the feelings of being within the real world. The more this is made possible the more useful VR will be in combating feelings of loneliness and social anxiety during periods of prolonged isolation in the real world.

“I’ve been in here with students for tutorials and […] students have said that they feel more presence with other students in this environment” (108-111,P9M) “I’m a perceptual psychologist so I even think about it from the view of like it feels like some of the spaces that I go into now in Altspace really regularly feel in my head like real spaces that I go to so when I feel like I go to a couple of events in the afternoon in Altspace and then I take the headset off it kind of feels like I left my house and I went out and did something and then came back, it doesn’t feel like I was in my house the whole time” (154-160,P1M)

More ways to connect

In addition to the greater immersion and presence that VR can create, Altspace VR also gives individuals the ability to control and create their own environments for social interaction. It is not possible within the real world for most of us to simply create our own hang-outs or to control our environments so easily. This allows people to therefore interact in ways that up until now have not been possible. Several participants linked the ability to create stimulating and exciting environments in the Altspace VR to something that they can feel proud of, and this gives them social capital over other users with less advanced skills in world creation. This in turn helps to improve their ability to socialise and build further friendships in social VR that they would not have been able to build in the real world.

“I made a beach environment, a beach world and there are other ones out there, but I made a custom private one for me and my friends to meet in and so we meet in there and other places and we bounce around and look at different places but we often find somewhere like a private room where we can actually have a nice private conversation and we don’t have to worry about anyone interfering and everyone said its fantastic it really allows us to connect in ways, you know like those personal chats you have with close friends that it’s hard to do in any other medium, it feels a little more natural in VR to do that and so it’s been fantastic, we’ve been really enjoying it” (132-142,P1M) “Since coming in here now [my friends] are like world building and have created some really awesome spaces in here and so we go in and check out the space that they just created and so I’m still kind of doing project oriented hang-outs as far as like we will be like oh that lighting needs to be a little different and stuff like that but it’s been a really fun way to hang out with people that I already may have been friends with before all this happened but now that this happened they are starting to come into this space so we can connect even more often” (214-222,P5F)

Theme 4. How social VR is helping during the Covid-19 pandemic

In the second part of the focus group, participants were asked to think about how they thought Altspace VR was helping them specifically during the Covid-19 pandemic and whether they thought that others could benefit from this experience too. The responses were very positive and provided a great deal of insight into how Altspace VR is helping them to deal with loneliness and social anxiety during Covid-19. A number of key sub-themes emerged from this category.

Helps people feel less lonely

Several participants said that social VR helps them to feel connected with a circle of friends and that this helps to reduce feelings of loneliness and depression.

“I feel it really does help me in social isolation. I have been on sabbatical this last year so my whole year has been about isolation even before Covid-19, I’ve been working a lot on my own and that sort of thing so yeah becoming part of the community in Altspace, collectively in the different ways that I have has had a huge impact on my mental health. I was getting a little depressed in the fall and having this community has really felt like that it brought me out of it a bit” (147-154,P1M) “By the second semester I only had like one course and we were like really concentrating on a specific project and everything and it was like really limiting me to go outside and do some other stuff. Even though I’m an introvert but I do feel like I really wanted to go outside and have some fun. I really like to see other stuff around me and doing all this stuff here in VR kept me really engaged with the communities” (191-197,P8M)

Helps to motivate and provide structure

Having a purpose and being occupied with an interesting project and subsequently conversing about its progress/issues with others in social VR were perceived as motivational factors, which helped them to deal with the imposed social isolation.

“Events really motivated me to keep busy also when I was in social isolation for two months. Yeah, two months is a long time you know to not get out of your house so that was great I created some sense of purpose and it was really heart-warming to see everybody come together and really interesting people as well. Everybody has something cool to share and was very helpful so that gave me some energy, you know to just keep on going and make the best out of the situation” (166-173,P3F) “I finally have a structure for a project that I have been thinking about for over a year now and having these interactions in here and talking to people allowed me to bring a clear picture of how I can start a project I have been thinking about and start building it inside Altspace, so that’s a big plus for me” (178-182,P6F)

Helps people to be less anti-social and reduced social anxiety

Several participants explained that social VR is “a great way to connect and less intimidating as well” for socially anxious, i.e. “unsocial” and “introverted” people, who as a result often feel lonely. In addition, social VR is a convenient tool for social interactions as it brings people closer “especially during these situations, but not only during like pandemics”. (240–243,P3F)

“In my case the Covid increased my social interaction with people because I’m a pretty anti-social person in real life so for me this has increased ten-fold my social interaction in general” (174-176,P6F). “Covid pushed people inside spaces like VR and made my social interactions far easier to have” (186-188,P6F). “I am in sort of a group, let’s say of people who have problems with connecting with people, this is awesome. This is definitely a big plus and I would like more of this” (322-324,P6F) “I was, I guess, somewhat socially isolated before coming in Altspace I tend to just like to work on projects and stay at home or be at work, but since coming in Altspace I’ve definitely started experiencing more of the social aspect of living like making connections with other people in ways that aren’t strictly like a project that I’m working on and so that’s been nice” (202-208,P5F). “I do think that VR can help us, those of us who are socially isolated or have social anxieties of some sort. It does make it more accessible for us to be able to go into a space and interact with people. For instance in real life, if you were to have social anxiety and you start feeling almost like a panic attack coming on, that would prevent you from going into a real life space, whereas in VR you […] can say, oh I have to go really easily and you’re back in your home and you can work through whatever may have come up with social anxiety. So I do think it makes social interactions more accessible in those cases” (307-316,P5F)

Helps to socialise with real life friends during lock-down

Another idea that surfaced among the participants is the potential to use social VR as a mode of interaction/engagement with real-life friends/family members who live afar. Participants expressed the view that the current restriction on face-to-face contact could to some extent be counterbalanced by inviting real-world friends into social VR to socialise.

“The fully social part of VR has happened because of the Covid-19 situation, because I used to go for dinners with people like every month, […] and we can’t do the real world social, so we are trying to do the VR social” (142-146,P1M) “Once everyone went into social isolation for Covid I actually started hanging out with a friend that lives 3 hours away from me more than before because before it would be a 3 hour drive, but then once all this happened, I actually convinced them to come into Altspace” (208-212,P5F) “It’s been a really fun way to hang out with people that I already may have been friends with before all this happened but now that this happened they are starting to come into this space so we can connect even more often. (218-222,P5F).

Discussion of qualitative findings

Overall, participants’ commentaries to Theme 1 reconfirm that their usage of social VR has increased during the period of imposed social isolation and restrictions on physical meetups due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They were using social VR to meet with real-world friends to satisfy their social needs and continue to receive support from people they are close to; or to mix socially with other users who they meet either at a “campfire” or whilst taking part in regular events inside of the social VR platform, thus expanding their social network of non-intimate contacts. As a result, they felt less lonely online (whilst being in Altspace VR) as they felt like they were in the same space together. Interestingly, participants noted that they also benefited emotionally from meeting like-minded people/professionals and sharing ideas with them, getting support and advice, and working together in real-time. This is a new explanation why people use VR technology, which did not surface in the earlier research studies. Nonetheless this reason ties with the Need to Belong Theory 47 . This is useful to help us to understand why users visit Altspace VR in general and during the enforced social isolation period.

In theme 2 participants’ responses reiterate what has already been explained in the literature that shy, socially inhibited and anxious individuals find online anonymity liberating and less inhibited than the real world 52 . Moreover, in Altspace VR it is also possible to make use of non-verbal communication such as emojis or emoticons (see Fig. 6 ).

Use of emojis to communicate in Altspace VR.

Some participants commented that their geographic location or work/life balance in the real world made it very difficult for them to meet people with similar interests. The social internet, e.g. Facebook 53 and video conferencing 54 have long been used to socialise with friends and family and have been found to be an affective intervention for reducing loneliness. Theme 3 considers that social VR could be regarded as the latest endeavour within this field as individuals are able to create their own exciting hangouts, e.g. a beach or a city from Ancient Greece. Furthermore users are able to easily control environments and restrict entry. This allows people to interact in ways that up until now have not been possible.

Findings in Theme 4 give a clear indication that social VR helps to reduce feelings of loneliness, and this further supports the findings of 32 . Social interactions in social VR are also particularly attractive to those who are lonely or shy/socially anxious/self-conscious or have poor social skills, etc. as they feel more in control of their online interactions and feel that they have a broader range of topics that they are able to discuss compared with in the real world 55 . Lonelier people also feel that they can be more themselves in online social interactions than in the real world 56 .

General discussion

People use social VR for many different reasons: to socialise with new and existing friends; to join social interest groups; to learn new skills and generally to be part of a larger community of people (including other professionals) than those that they are part of in the real world. Social VR attracts a wide range of people because of the ease in which people can meet people with similar interests to their own, although it could be argued that up until the recent Covid-19 pandemic social VR tended to attract a greater amount of people who found real-life social interaction difficult. The results of this study show a reduction in social anxiety in individuals with moderate, severe and very severe social anxiety in the online condition, i.e. when using social VR. The increase in availability of VR headsets in recent years has led to an expansion in usage of social VR and the recent Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent social distancing rules led to more people and organisations making a greater use of VR to communicate and carry out their daily business and routines during the prolonged period of social isolation. Social VR also enables people to collaborate in ways not possible within the real world, reducing geographic restrictions and breaking through communication barriers by using visually stimulating content creation tools to enhance the process of human interaction through world-building and event hosting.

The main objective of this study was to explore whether social VR could be used to help reduce feelings of loneliness and social anxiety amongst people confined to their homes and away from their regular friendship groups and social connections, i.e. when the quantity and quality of their social network is gravely affected. Overall, the synthesised results of the present study show that participants experience a statistically significant reduction in loneliness and social anxiety when in social VR than in the real world during prolonged periods of imposed social isolation. Qualitative findings support/validate the quantitative results for H1. Thus, the evidence shows that social VR can decrease the sense of loneliness and social anxiety with users and have an overall positive effect on their emotional and social wellbeing.

The qualitative data diverges from the quantitative results presented for H2 that addressed the effect of being part of a VSG separately for loneliness and social anxiety. The quantitative results showed no significant effect for loneliness in the online and the offline conditions, whereas participants’ views showed that being a member of a VSG created a sense of belongingness and helped them to feel less lonely and depressed. Quantitative data showed no significant effect for social anxiety when an individual is a member of a VSG or not; but revealed a medium effect for social anxiety in the offline condition indicating that users, who are part of a VSG and subsequently take part in regular group events, experience less social anxiety in real world (i.e. offline), than those who are not part of a VSG. Participants who are part of a VSG were positive about the possibilities of social VR and being part of a VSG, because this setup helped shy and socially inhibited individuals to observe conversations, use emojis to show emotions rather than speak, use the online anonymity to get over the discomfort of social interactions and gradually become more connected and accepted by other members of the VSG. This prepares socially anxious individuals to handle being out there (in online and the real world).

Qualitative findings are in line with the quantitative results for H3 in that the degree of loneliness and social anxiety is also further reduced by factors such as having a circle of online friends. Social VR allows people to meet others who share similar interests, this is more difficult within the real world for people who struggle with social anxiety or who live in remote locations for example, or as was the case with this study, people who were confined to their homes due to social distancing rules during a pandemic. The qualitative data helps to produce a better understanding in relation to ‘online friends’ as these include individuals who were met in social VR and real-life friends who currently live afar and were invited to join the social VR platform.

The qualitative findings somewhat converge with quantitative results for H4 in that online loneliness reduces with the length of time the participant has been using social VR, i.e. participants who had been using social VR for greater than 6 months experienced less loneliness than those who joined during the Covid-19 pandemic. The length of time the participant had been using social VR had no effect on their feelings of loneliness in the real world. Comments from participants who have been members of Altspace VR for more than 6 months revealed that finding a new (online) community that supports their need to belong and provides meaningful and positive social interactions acted as an antidote to the loneliness that they experience in the real world. Individuals who struggle to build meaningful relationships in the real world due to social anxiety and other social phobias turn to social VR as it provides a less confrontational way in which to form and maintain social relationships with others and therefore help to reduce feelings of loneliness and social anxiety.

Research limitations and implications

The heterogeneity of the sample for the quantitative survey enabled conclusions to be drawn regarding the participant experience in Altspace VR, their subjective feelings of loneliness and social during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, in interpreting the views of participants in the focus group it should be stressed that the sample of participants was solely recruited from the Educators in VR research event and that this may not represent the views of others who do not take part in such events. Although the reported themes were clearly identified, there remains a possibility that additional themes would be detected should the views of participants from a wider pool be collected.

It is the researcher’s understanding that this is the first study that has exclusively focused on participant’s feelings of loneliness and social anxiety during a period of enforced prolonged isolation whereby social VR has been utilized as an intervention to help reduce such feelings. The results offered here, should therefore be taken as a starting point upon which further empirical studies could be built. Longitudinal investigations could be carried out to further assess the suitability of social VR as an intervention to help reduce loneliness and social anxiety amongst specific communities, e.g. remote learners/workers, people living alone or in care, the less physically able, prisoners and other sub-groups of people facing loneliness and social anxiety whereby their ability to socialise with other is in some way restricted. Future research would also need to provide accurate estimates of the prevalence of loneliness and social anxiety in these sub-groups.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced people to change the way in which they connected with others during lockdown. Social VR helped to improve social connectedness during the COVID-19 pandemic and reduce “lockdown loneliness”. Post-pandemic it is necessary to recognise the additional needs that face society, especially vulnerable people and those struggling with mental health issues resulting from lockdown. Social VR can, therefore, be a way of further supporting people facing social isolation, loneliness and social anxiety. Social VR platforms may be virtual, but the relationships we build in them are very real.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article or in the accompanying Supplementary Information file.

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Kenyon, K., Kinakh, V. & Harrison, J. Social virtual reality helps to reduce feelings of loneliness and social anxiety during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sci Rep 13 , 19282 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-46494-1

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Long-term impact of COVID-19 on body composition explored

By Dr. Liji Thomas, MD

Following the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which was caused by the emergence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), many survivors have experienced long-term symptoms collectively referred to as long COVID or post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC). Long COVID symptoms may include but are not limited to, fatigue, neurological symptoms, alterations in the sense of smell and taste, as well as new-onset diabetes or autoimmune disease.

The chronic effects of COVID-19

A new report published in the journal Nutrients reveals that COVID-19 may also affect body composition, even in those who did not acquire the infection. Moreover, public health restrictions on movement outside the home, with compensatory shifts in lifestyle, may have indirectly led to alterations in weight, body fat mass, and lean body mass (LBM).

The primary factors related to changes in body composition include COVID-19 with related muscle inflammation and damage, restriction of movement, a poor-quality diet, increased drinking, and less physical activity.

Previous studies have shown that body weight and fat mass increased after the first pandemic-related lockdown, whereas bone mineral density, hand grip strength, and fat mass all showed adverse trends in women. In COVID-19 survivors, sarcopenia, as well as increased weight and fat mass, have been reported, particularly in those with long COVID.

To date, the long-term effects of COVID-19 on body composition have not been reported. The current study is a pioneering exploration of this area in COVID-19, with examined parameters including lean body mass (LBM), bone mineral density (BMD), trunk fat, and total fat.

About the study

The current study utilized a prospective design to compare body composition using two whole-body DXA scans (DXA#1 and DXA#2, respectively). DXA#1 was obtained before the start of the pandemic, whereas DXA#2 was obtained thereafter. Inflammatory markers and fasting lipid levels were also measured.

For all study participants with a history of COVID-19, the DXA#2 was obtained a year or more later. The study included 160 adults with a mean age of 43 years. About 50% of the study cohort tested positive for COVID-19 before the second scan.

Over 50% of uninfected individuals were smokers, as compared to 30% in the survivor group. Moreover, 55% of survivors were diagnosed with PASC, with about 60% experiencing tiredness, 50% reporting brain fog, and 40% experiencing breathlessness and anxiety, depression, or low mood.

Only one survivor was hospitalized due to COVID-19; however, this patient did not require admission to the intensive care unit.

What did the study show?

Inflammatory markers were increased in COVID-19 patients, with higher vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) and oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels. Conversely, tumor necrosis factor-receptor II (TNF-RII) levels declined in uninfected individuals.

Body fat increased in uninfected individuals by approximately 900 and 160 grams, respectively, compared to those diagnosed with COVID-19. Similarly, total fat increased by 1,500 and 200 grams, respectively. These differences persisted after adjusting for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and COVID-19 status.

High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) levels were associated with total and trunk fat. LBM also increased by nearly 1,000 grams among uninfected individuals and declined by 65 grams in COVID-19-survivors.

Among COVID-19 survivors, PASC did not differentiate between individuals who exhibited similar annualized trunk fat, total fat mass, or LBM measurements.

Conclusions

Notably, all COVID-19 survivors witnessed a decline in their lean body mass and an increase in several inflammatory biomarkers over the same period, suggesting a direct impact of COVID-19 on muscle .”

The study findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in increased total fat, trunk fat, and body weight, but markedly so in uninfected individuals. Thus, these effects can be attributed to pandemic-related changes, including a sedentary lifestyle, increased snacking and processed food consumption, and lockdown restrictions, rather than to the infection itself.

Although LBM increased during the study period in uninfected individuals, this characteristic marginally decreased in COVID-19-positive individuals. This could be directly related to SARS-CoV-2 infection, mainly as very few treated patients were prescribed steroids. Prior research has also reported muscle fiber atrophy and severe inflammatory damage to muscle cells with COVID-19, thus indicating that this tissue is a target of SARS-CoV-2.

Interestingly, only a few inflammatory markers were raised in COVID-19 survivors, none of which were correlated with the body composition parameters except hsCRP, which was associated with total and trunk fat.

Understanding the relationship between COVID-19 infection and alterations in body composition can help in implementing early strategies to help prevent these long-term changes as well as developing personalized exercise and nutrition plans to reduce the risk of metabolic complications .”

Atieh, O., Durieux, J. C., Baissary, J. et al. (2024). The long-term effect of COVID-19 infection on body composition. Nutrients . doi:10.3390/nu16091364 .

Study: The long-term effect of COVID-19 infection on body composition. Image Credit: New Africa / Shutterstock.com

Coming out of the ashes we rise: Experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse international nursing students at two Australian universities during the Covid-19 pandemic

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Background and aim: Research on international students conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic has persistently highlighted the vulnerabilities and challenges that they experienced when staying in the host country to continue with their studies. The findings from such research can inevitably create a negative image of international students and their ability to respond to challenges during unprecedented times. Therefore, this paper took a different stance and reported on a qualitative study that explored culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) international nursing students who overcame the challenges brought about by the pandemic to continue with their studies in Australia. Method: A descriptive qualitative research design guided by the processes of constructivist grounded theory was selected to ascertain insights from participants' experiences of studying abroad in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Three themes emerged from the collected data that described the participants' lived experiences, and they were: 1) Viewing international education as the pursuit of a better life, 2) Focusing on personal growth, and 3) Coming out of the ashes we rise. Discussion: The findings highlight the importance of recognising the investments and sacrifices that CaLD international students and their families make in pursuit of international tertiary education. The findings also underscore the importance of acknowledging the qualities that CaLD international students have to achieve self-growth and ultimately self-efficacy as they stay in the host country during a pandemic. Conclusion: Future research should focus on identifying strategies that are useful for CaLD international nursing students to experience personal growth and ultimately self-efficacy and continue with their studies in the host country during times of uncertainty such as a pandemic.

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The authors have declared no competing interest.

Funding Statement

This study did not receive any funding

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I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

Ethical approval was obtained from Curtin University Human Research Ethics Office (HRE2022-0238) and The University of Southern Queensland Ethical Review Committee (H22REA114).

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

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