COVID19 and Sexuality

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost every aspect of human lives across the globe; sexual life is not an exception to it. However, larger robust studies are warranted to determine the effects of COVID-19 and/or lockdown on human sexuality. In the context of COVID-19, some immediate questions should be addressed regarding the sexual transmission of Coronavirus (Holtmann et al., 2020), safe sexual practice, regular sexual behaviour, pornography, sexual minority group concerns, pregnancy and childbirth during COVID-19 (Kumar, 2020), effective ways of dealing sexual medicine emergencies, domestic violence during the COVID-19 lockdown, effects of COVID-19 on fetus and pregnancy outcome, effect on mar riage and cohabitation, challenges of commercial sex workers and customers etc. Studies reported that during this lockdown as well as postlockdown period, pornography consumption has been substantially increased (Mestre- Bach et al., 2020). Erectile dysfunction can be found in the COVID-19 survivors due to endothelial dysfunction (Sansone et al., 2020) and COVID-19 can also cause male infertility (Vishvkarma and Rajender, 2020). One study from the three countries of South-East Asia (Bangladesh, India, & Nepal) found no major change in sexual habit and increased emotional closeness among heterosexual couples (Arafat et al., 2020). Other studies from Italy revealed a significant reduction of sexual frequency and reduction in Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI)score (Schiavi et al., 2020). COVID-19 affecting the sexual life can be speculated in several ways such as the biology of Coronavirus, risk of transmission, psychological consequences of the pandemic itself as well as the lockdown measures, sudden changes in lifestyle, changes in income, social aspects like social exclusion and isolation which can be in either direction.It has been seen that people with psychiatric disorders (e.g. depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorders, etc) also experience sexual dysfunction (due to the nature of the illness and side effects of the medications). It has been seen that during this pandemic there is increase in depression and anxiety (Roy et al., 2020), which is likely to affect the sexual functioning too. Similarly, people many times self-medicate for their mental health issues and encounter several side effects, which might affect the sexual functionin