COVID-19 is a major source of fear, stress, and anxiety as well as a major factor impacting the health and wellbeing of people worldwide. The present study builds on the recently developed "Fear of COVID-19 Scale" (Ahorsu et al., In International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00270-8, 2020). The sample comprised of 850 participants, male and female young adults from Russia and Belarus. The majority of survey participants are university students and graduates. Females, students, and others from Russia report higher levels of COVID-19-related fear than those from Belarus. Respondents from Russia and Belarus report less fear than people from Iran who were surveyed earlier. The scale used for the present survey evidenced a good Cronbach's Alpha measure of internal consistency or reliability (0.809). Clearly, further research is needed across locations and over time about the nature and extent of fear caused by COVID 19. Overall, the FCV-19S appears to be a valuable and brief instrument that may provide useful information for intervention and policy purposes to migrate fear and problem behavior linked to infectious disease outbreaks.

Coronavirus was first detected in November 2019 (Chan et al. 2020). The infection spread quickly in Wuhan (the capital of the Chinese province of Hubei) and then throughout China and other countries including the Russian Federation (RF) and Republic of Belarus (RB). In early May, more than 190,000 Russians and 20,168 Belarusian were infected (Johns Hopkins University 2020).Russia and Belarus were part of the former Soviet Union and have a similar culture-a single written language and common religion; also, there are close economic and political relations. However, Russia and Belarus have chosen different strategies in fighting COVID-19.Russia has taken a path similar to most European countries-strict quarantine (self-isolation), movement restriction, social distancing, mandatory use of personal protective equipment including masks and gloves, public event bans, as well as border and air traffic closures. In comparison, Belarus has not endorsed quarantine and has proceeded with "life as usual" without closing borders, businesses, restaurants, museums, cinemas, schools, or universities. It has imposed a 2-week quarantine of Belarusian citizens who came from countries with the coronavirus epidemic.Pandemic-related conditions are linked to negative economic consequences effecting living conditions at all levels (Atkeson 2020;Baker et al. 2020) and increased mental health incidents. Evidence about the psychological impact of coronavirus points to conditions of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicide (Galea et al. 2020;Sorokin et al. 2020; Wan 2020) as well as confusion, anger, fear, boredom, stigma, and stress over the loss of

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has a significant impact on the well-being of people and nations worldwide, with major public health, economic, social and safety implications (Nicola et al. 2020). The policies enacted to cope with the outbreak differ among and within countries; however, there are common response measures such as social distance, lockdown, and stay-at-home (Lin 2020; Pakpour and Griffiths 2020). Moreover, the vast majority of day-to-day activities such as work and education have become online efforts with uncertain effects on the physical and mental health among people of all ages.Health authorities have recognized the probable deterioration of mental health conditions due to COVID-19 (WHO 2020a). For example, 24.9% of Chinese college students experienced some level of anxiety (Cao et al. 2020); and considerable stress, anxiety, and depression have been reported among the general population in China (Wang et al. 2020). Similar findings are evident in other locations (Harper et al. 2020;Sorokin et al. 2020). Taking a different methodological approach, Knipe et al. ( 2020) analyzed trends in Google searches which indicated a rise of fear and excessive searches for self-care.Fear, as a multi-faceted factor, may be one of the most significant underlying elements that could lead to impairment of mental health conditions and well-being (Kumar and Nayar 2020). Given the prominent role that fear seems to have during COVID-19, Ahorsu et al. (2020) developed The Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S), a 7-item unidimensional scale which assesses the severity of fears related to COVID-19. This instrument has been shown to have satisfactory psychometric characteristics and validity in multiple populations around the world (

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