The tsunami of misinformation on COVID-19 challenged the health information literacy of the general public and the readability of educational material: a commentary

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.…”

“…Although thought of as both the antidote to and culprit of the infodemic ( Radu, 2020 ), it played more of a negative role than a positive one. Various commentaries, letters, viewpoints, and editorials pointed out the negative roles it had played during the infodemic ( Radu, 2020 ; Datta et al., 2020 ; Stephens, 2020 ; Orso et al., 2020 ; Naeem et al., 2020 ; Sahu and Agrawal, 2020 ; JCIH Editorial Team 2020 ; Nguyen and Nguyen, 2020 ; Rathore and Farooq, 2020 ; Bunker, 2020 ; Ahmed Siddiqui et al., 2020 ; Allahverdipour, 2020 ; Buchanan, 2020 ; Jalali and Mohammadi, 2020 ; Krittanawong et al., 2020 ; Kulkarni et al., 2020 ; Love et al., 2020 ; Marin, 2020 ; Mian and Khan, 2020 ; Moran, 2020 ; Ostrovsky and Chen, 2020 ; Rosenberg et al., 2020 ; Vasconcellos-Silva and Castiel, 2020 ; Viswanath et al., 2020 ; Wormer, 2020 ; Mokhtari and Mirzaei, 2020 ; Mheidly and Fares, 2020 ; Kearsley and Duffy, 2020 ; Mondiale de la Santé, 2020 ; Sasidharan et al., 2020 ; Gottlieb and Dyer, 2020 ; Zucker, 2020 ; Chou et al., 2021 ; Nelson et al., 2020 ; Burtscher et al., 2020 ; Greene et al., 2020 ; Yap and Xie, 2020 ; Vraga and Jacobsen, 2020 ; Mooney and Juhász, 2020 ), which were shown below with support from empirical studies.…”

“…Education and training on health/eHealth literacy were required for the public communities or individuals to increase their ability to differentiate reliable information from the rumors. ( Durodolu and Ibenne, 2020 ; Wormer, 2020 ; Mokhtari and Mirzaei, 2020 ; Mondiale de la Santé, 2020 ; Gottlieb and Dyer, 2020 ; Chou et al., 2021 ; Bastani and Bahrami, 2020 ; Vanderpool et al., 2020 ; Okereke et al., 2020 ; Schiavo, 2020 ; Morgan-Daniel et al., 2020 ; Alvarez-Risco et al., 2020 ; Chong et al., 2020 ; Cichocka, 2020 ; Scerri and Grech, 2020 ; Patel et al., 2020 ; Yu and Mani, 2020 ; Ahmed, 2020 ; Hui et al., 2020 ; Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2020 ; Vraga et al., 2020 ; Sharma et al., 2020 ; Xie et al., 2020 ; Dakhesh et al., 2020 ; Eysenbach, 2002 ; Graham, 2021 ; Morley et al., 2020 ; Vervoort et al., 2020 ; Sperry and Scheibe, 2002 ; Khan et al., 2020 ; Ratzan et al., 2020 ; Hartley and Vu, 2020 ) Empirical studies showed that an empowering intervention was able to significantly reduce the conspiracy beliefs among the public, hence reducing the spreading of rumors ( van Stekelenburg et al., 2021 ; Richardson et al., 2020 ).…”

Health Care Providers’ Trusted Sources for Information About COVID-19 Vaccines: Mixed Methods Study

“…Health information about COVID-19 has proliferated in news media and social media (ie, web-based applications for creating or sharing content and social networking), and has rapidly evolved as scientists and public health professionals learned new information about the transmission and management of SARS-CoV-2 [ 3 , 4 ]. The real-time availability of new scientific and health information on COVID-19 has undoubtedly aided pandemic response but has also created information challenges for health care providers and the public in navigating misinformation, contradictions, and complexity [ 5 ]. Understanding how to effectively navigate a complex health information environment is an essential component of pandemic response for health care providers, who must apply changing information about the COVID-19 pandemic to practice.…”

Preparing new normal: the health literacy assessment on the Covid-19

“…Furthermore, new normal was introduced as the global health education and global strategy to address the impact of the Covid-19 on the economic aspect [3] . Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation regarding the Covid-19 and the prevention strategy [4] . It described the poor health literacy of the Covid-19 among population.…”