Highlights To our best knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the psychological effect of COVID-19 pandemic on nurses living in Islamic culture dominant region. The anxiety and depression levels (M± SD) of nurses in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in early February using Zung’s scales were 42.56±8.95 and 46.52±11.88, respectively. The factors associated with psychological variables were social support, family role, fear of contagion, the desire to learn knowledge about COVID-19, etc.

Background: The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, owing to the uncertain nature of COVID-19, can cause concerns about the potential health risks and may engender fear, anxiety, depression and so on. China is a multi-ethnic society, and Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture is a multi-ethnic residential city and is influenced profoundly by Islamic culture. Culture can influence perceptions, but it is unknown how much it affects frontline nurses’ perceptions of the emerging infectious disease outbreak. The aim of this study was to investigate the psychological characteristics of nurses with minority ethnic backgrounds in response to the public health crisis and to explore its related factors. Methods: We undertook a cross-sectional online survey in the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu province, China. There were eight secondary-level hospitals and one tertiary-level hospital, six of which were COVID-19-designated hospitals. The structured questionnaire consisted of demographic questionnaire, COVID-19 related questionnaire, Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, and Self-rating Depression Scale. Results: A total of 1569 nurses enrolled in our online survey. The majority of the nurses were women (98.8%), aged younger than 40-year-old (90.3%), holders of a junior college degree (59.5%), married (74.6%), needed to care for children (63.9%) or elders (84.6%), with working years of less than 10 years (61.9%), and worked at non-high exposure departments(75%) in secondary hospital (66.9%) or COVID-19-designated hospital (85.4%). The anxiety and depression level (M± SD) were 42.56±8.95 and 46.52 ±11.883, respectively. The factors associated with psychological variables were social support, family role, fear of contagion, the desire to learn knowledge about COVID-19, and so on. Conclusion: Nurses who are of the Islamic culture are affected slightly by the COVID-19 outbreak, but their concern and factors associated with psychological variables are in keeping with the common nursing groups.