Social Stigma associated with COVID 19 and measures to address the stigma

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.In this scenario of COVID-19 pandemic and the associated crisis, a lot of social stigma is being created and these are influencing people to develop discrimination and stereotype towards a particular community or minority group. Social stigma is a negative association with a community or group who characterizes a particular quality and specific disease. This prevailing stigma is encouraging people to hide their disease and not to take proper public health protective measures. Currently people of Asian accent, health care professionals and people who travelled abroad experience this stigma. Social stigma arose during the similar disease outbreaks like SARS and Ebola. The crisis measures such as quarantine and lockdown are affecting people’s mental health. Anxiety, fear and scare are being developed among various communities and socio-economic groups. The impacts of quarantine can be long lasting and disastrous for a person’s mental health. People may develop acute stress disorder, anxiety, insomnia, depression, and other mental health disorders post-quarantine. Measures must be taken to address this stigma for managing public health. Sharing authentic information, cross-checking information, not sharing patients details, not attaching the particular disease with any place or ethnic group, spreading more positive narratives of recovered cases, sharing information highlighting there is no particular region or religion for the virus, showing support towards those who travelled and are under quarantine, stop sharing information which create panic and fear among the society, etc can help to address the stigma