Aim: To study stigmatization of healthcare workers due to COVID-19 pandemic Methodology: Using a cross-sectional study, a total of 134 healthcare workers were approached at Mayo Hospital, Lahore. An interview based, pre-tested, semi-constructed questionnaire consisting of both open and close ended questions were used for data collection. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 26. Results: Out of 134 healthcare workers, 40.3% were male and 59.7% were female. Distribution among doctors and nurses was 60.4% and 39.6% respectively. 51.5% of healthcare workers felt stigmatized due to working in the COVID-19 pandemic. 69.4% of healthcare workers knew of other people who faced similar stigmatization due to their exposure to COVID-19. Almost each age group and specialty faced such stigmatization. Conclusion: This study helped in understanding the stigma healthcare workers had to face during COVID-19 Pandemic which lead to significant distress and suffering for the healthcare workers. Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, stigmatization, healthcare workers

An effective strategy to control the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic takes into account inputs from many domains, including community epidemiology, surveillance and testing, contact tracing capacity, support for vulnerable populations, and health care system strain. Provincial and federal governments currently lack a universal approach to presenting relevant pandemic data from these domains to the general public in a way that engages them in decision making and promotes adherence to policies. We propose a framework to analyze COVID-19 pandemic data on an ongoing basis using inputs from these five domains, which can be scaled to the local public health unit, provincial, or national level. Data analysis was qualitative and semi-quantitative because there was a paucity of publicly available data on surveillance and testing, contact tracing, and health care system strain, which limited our ability to perform internal and external validation of our model. We urge the federal government to mandate a core set of reporting items across local, provincial, and federal jurisdictions that may then be used to perform validation and implementation of our proposed framework.