Evidence of psychosocial & somatic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indian healthcare workers

Sir,

We read with interest the recently published article by Chakma et al1, in your esteemed journal. It is a succinctly written paper, and we commend the authors for it. This is an area of interest for us as we are presently pursuing a similar study, and we would like to add a few points that we feel would enrich this article further.

COVID-19 has always raised anxiety and stress among healthcare workers (HCWs). Aside from the fact of human-to-human transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 infection, the presence of infected asymptomatic people has added onto the anxiety and fear in HCWs2. Replacement of clinical visits with telemedicine has reduced the patient volume in clinics leading to cutting down of staff volume, thereby affecting private practitioners3. Some studies showed correlation between psychologic symptoms and physical symptoms such as headache, lethargy, anxiety and insomnia. There is also a strong association between clinical workplace environment stressors and long-term cardiometabolic risk4.

Apart from these, high risk of exposure to COVID-19 is associated with increased levels of stress, and there is evidence to show that raised psychological stress can trigger significant increase in inflammatory activities5.