COVID-19 and health literacy: the yell of a silent epidemic amidst the pandemic

Abstract

The emergence of a new form of Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) exposed weaknesses of health services in several countries, with overcrowding of hospitals, and lack of supplies and professionals in combating the disease, which sometimes contributed to the installation of social, political, and economic chaos. The critical situation experienced made the subject widely publicized so that the current pandemic also deals with an information epidemic. However, the data received and transmitted require prior critical analysis of its content, although not everyone is able to make the necessary judgment before using or sharing information, partly due to the lack of adequate health knowledge. Health literacy is a broad and important topic in public health but still globally underestimated, thus considered a silent epidemic. The exponential increase in the number of confirmed cases shows the world population's inadequacy and difficulty in understanding basic prevention guidelines. The COVID-19 pandemic warns of gaps in the health literacy levels of the world population and exposes the need for a comprehensive mapping to identify the overall health literacy status in more countries.

The causes, impacts and countermeasures of COVID-19 “Infodemic”: A systematic review using narrative synthesis

“…Another major cause of the infodemic is the low level of health/eHealth literacy, which referred to the ability to obtain, process, and understand health information and finally make health decisions ( Berkman et al., 2010 ; Kindig et al., 2004 ; Baur, 2020 ). Numerous editorials and commentaries were also found to point out its negative role during the infodemic ( Mokhtari and Mirzaei, 2020 ; Tagliabue et al., 2020 ; Nguyen and Catalan, 2020 ; Ogunkola et al., 2020 ; Hanspal and Hanspal, 2020 ; Lucero-Prisno et al., 2020 ; Sentell et al., 2020 ; Kletter, 2020 ; Cangussú et al., 2020 ; Jindal and Anand, 2020 ; Paakkari and Okan, 2020 ; Vanderpool et al., 2020 ; Okereke et al., 2020 ; Greenspan and Loftus, 2021 ; Schiavo, 2020 ; Morgan-Daniel et al., 2020 ; Scherer and Pennycook, 2020 ; Eysenbach, 2020 ; Alvarez-Risco et al., 2020 ; Ghazal Aghagoli et al., 2020 ; Anon, 2020 ; Chong et al., 2020 ), which was supported by the evidence from a considerable number of empirical studies. For example, a low level of health/eHealth literacy was found positively related to the conspiracy beliefs in different countries ( Duplaga, 2020 ; Pickles et al., 2020 ; Okan et al., 2020 ; Sallam et al., 2020 ; Sallam et al., 2020 ), which further contributed to the rumor spreading, as mentioned earlier.…”

Trends of global health literacy research (1995–2020): Analysis of mapping knowledge domains based on citation data mining

“…The 2020 global pandemic of COVID-19 shows that low health literacy is a public health problem that has long been underestimated worldwide [ 8 – 10 ]. For example, nearly half of European adults mentioned that they had inadequate health literacy for taking care of their own health issues as well as those of others [ 11 ]. However, substantial evidence has proven that health literacy is an important tool for the prevention of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), and sustainable long-term measures need to be implemented as early as possible [ 12 ].…”

Coping with the Third wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Africa: Implications for an Improved Outbreak Response

“…To promote voluntary testing on the African continent, it is required that Africans are equipped with sufficient knowledge to promote COVID-19 health literacy [ 26 ]. In addition, COVID-19 testing centers could be decentralized to places where people naturally congregate, for example, clubs, market squares and schools [ 25 ].…”