The effect of COVID-19 on socio-economic health determinants and the inequal social impact

The COVID-19 virus spread rapidly to the international community as an infectious contagious disease and was classified by the WHO as a pandemic on the 13th of March 2020. Its prevalence in conditions of social interaction and overcrowding has constituted a gate of transmission especially to the lower socioeconomic classes and has adversely developed chronic diseases due to comorbidity increasing the morbidity and mortality rates of the population.

The treatment of COVID-19 was carried out mainly with a similar repressive practice of the Middle Ages. The measure of quarantine (lock down) which translates into restriction and isolation of the individual has been restored. Of course, the application of social distancing negatively affected the well-being and revealed strong phenomena of psychological approach (e.g. depression, anxiety) caused by the disruption of social relations as well as the escalation of domestic violence with unclear future consequences for the institution and individuals.

The world community has received information exaggerations of extreme cases of the disease from the media, creating a conflicting intra-individual field, between essential health care and oversensitive phobic tendency of possible infection and symptoms.

Success in tackling the threat of the effects of COVID-19 should focus on reasoned information from reputable bodies and organizations of known prestige while improving and restraining socioeconomic factors from individual policies that contribute to the mitigation of social inequalities.

Keywords: COVID-19, social and digital inequalities, socio-economic determinants of health, pandemic