how did covid 19 affect your life essay

• Fact sheets
• Facts in pictures
• Publications
• Questions and answers
• Tools and toolkits
• Endometriosis
• Excessive heat
• Mental disorders
• Polycystic ovary syndrome
• All countries
• Eastern Mediterranean
• South-East Asia
• Western Pacific
• Data by country
• Country presence 
• Country strengthening 
• Country cooperation strategies 
• News releases
• Feature stories
• Press conferences
• Commentaries
• Photo library
• Afghanistan
• Cholera 
• Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
• Greater Horn of Africa
• Israel and occupied Palestinian territory
• Disease Outbreak News
• Situation reports
• Weekly Epidemiological Record
• Surveillance
• Health emergency appeal
• International Health Regulations
• Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee
• Classifications
• Data collections
• Global Health Observatory
• Global Health Estimates
• Mortality Database
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Health Inequality Monitor
• Global Progress
• World Health Statistics
• Partnerships
• Committees and advisory groups
• Collaborating centres
• Technical teams
• Organizational structure
• Initiatives
• General Programme of Work
• WHO Academy
• Investment in WHO
• WHO Foundation
• External audit
• Financial statements
• Internal audit and investigations 
• Programme Budget
• Results reports
• Governing bodies
• World Health Assembly
• Executive Board
• Member States Portal

Impact of COVID-19 on people's livelihoods, their health and our food systems

Joint statement by ilo, fao, ifad and who.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic is devastating: tens of millions of people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty, while the number of undernourished people, currently estimated at nearly 690 million, could increase by up to 132 million by the end of the year.

Millions of enterprises face an existential threat. Nearly half of the world’s 3.3 billion global workforce are at risk of losing their livelihoods. Informal economy workers are particularly vulnerable because the majority lack social protection and access to quality health care and have lost access to productive assets. Without the means to earn an income during lockdowns, many are unable to feed themselves and their families. For most, no income means no food, or, at best, less food and less nutritious food. 

The pandemic has been affecting the entire food system and has laid bare its fragility. Border closures, trade restrictions and confinement measures have been preventing farmers from accessing markets, including for buying inputs and selling their produce, and agricultural workers from harvesting crops, thus disrupting domestic and international food supply chains and reducing access to healthy, safe and diverse diets. The pandemic has decimated jobs and placed millions of livelihoods at risk. As breadwinners lose jobs, fall ill and die, the food security and nutrition of millions of women and men are under threat, with those in low-income countries, particularly the most marginalized populations, which include small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples, being hardest hit.

Millions of agricultural workers – waged and self-employed – while feeding the world, regularly face high levels of working poverty, malnutrition and poor health, and suffer from a lack of safety and labour protection as well as other types of abuse. With low and irregular incomes and a lack of social support, many of them are spurred to continue working, often in unsafe conditions, thus exposing themselves and their families to additional risks. Further, when experiencing income losses, they may resort to negative coping strategies, such as distress sale of assets, predatory loans or child labour. Migrant agricultural workers are particularly vulnerable, because they face risks in their transport, working and living conditions and struggle to access support measures put in place by governments. Guaranteeing the safety and health of all agri-food workers – from primary producers to those involved in food processing, transport and retail, including street food vendors – as well as better incomes and protection, will be critical to saving lives and protecting public health, people’s livelihoods and food security.

In the COVID-19 crisis food security, public health, and employment and labour issues, in particular workers’ health and safety, converge. Adhering to workplace safety and health practices and ensuring access to decent work and the protection of labour rights in all industries will be crucial in addressing the human dimension of the crisis. Immediate and purposeful action to save lives and livelihoods should include extending social protection towards universal health coverage and income support for those most affected. These include workers in the informal economy and in poorly protected and low-paid jobs, including youth, older workers, and migrants. Particular attention must be paid to the situation of women, who are over-represented in low-paid jobs and care roles. Different forms of support are key, including cash transfers, child allowances and healthy school meals, shelter and food relief initiatives, support for employment retention and recovery, and financial relief for businesses, including micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. In designing and implementing such measures it is essential that governments work closely with employers and workers.

Countries dealing with existing humanitarian crises or emergencies are particularly exposed to the effects of COVID-19. Responding swiftly to the pandemic, while ensuring that humanitarian and recovery assistance reaches those most in need, is critical.

Now is the time for global solidarity and support, especially with the most vulnerable in our societies, particularly in the emerging and developing world. Only together can we overcome the intertwined health and social and economic impacts of the pandemic and prevent its escalation into a protracted humanitarian and food security catastrophe, with the potential loss of already achieved development gains.

We must recognize this opportunity to build back better, as noted in the Policy Brief issued by the United Nations Secretary-General. We are committed to pooling our expertise and experience to support countries in their crisis response measures and efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. We need to develop long-term sustainable strategies to address the challenges facing the health and agri-food sectors. Priority should be given to addressing underlying food security and malnutrition challenges, tackling rural poverty, in particular through more and better jobs in the rural economy, extending social protection to all, facilitating safe migration pathways and promoting the formalization of the informal economy.

We must rethink the future of our environment and tackle climate change and environmental degradation with ambition and urgency. Only then can we protect the health, livelihoods, food security and nutrition of all people, and ensure that our ‘new normal’ is a better one.

Media Contacts

Kimberly Chriscaden

Communications Officer World Health Organization

Nutrition and Food Safety (NFS) and COVID-19

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

In Their Own Words, Americans Describe the Struggles and Silver Linings of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The outbreak has dramatically changed americans’ lives and relationships over the past year. we asked people to tell us about their experiences – good and bad – in living through this moment in history..

Pew Research Center has been asking survey questions over the past year about Americans’ views and reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. In August, we gave the public a chance to tell us in their own words how the pandemic has affected them in their personal lives. We wanted to let them tell us how their lives have become more difficult or challenging, and we also asked about any unexpectedly positive events that might have happened during that time.

The vast majority of Americans (89%) mentioned at least one negative change in their own lives, while a smaller share (though still a 73% majority) mentioned at least one unexpected upside. Most have experienced these negative impacts and silver linings simultaneously: Two-thirds (67%) of Americans mentioned at least one negative and at least one positive change since the pandemic began.

For this analysis, we surveyed 9,220 U.S. adults between Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020. Everyone who completed the survey is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.  Read more about the ATP’s methodology . 

Respondents to the survey were asked to describe in their own words how their lives have been difficult or challenging since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, and to describe any positive aspects of the situation they have personally experienced as well. Overall, 84% of respondents provided an answer to one or both of the questions. The Center then categorized a random sample of 4,071 of their answers using a combination of in-house human coders, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service and keyword-based pattern matching. The full methodology  and questions used in this analysis can be found here.

In many ways, the negatives clearly outweigh the positives – an unsurprising reaction to a pandemic that had killed  more than 180,000 Americans  at the time the survey was conducted. Across every major aspect of life mentioned in these responses, a larger share mentioned a negative impact than mentioned an unexpected upside. Americans also described the negative aspects of the pandemic in greater detail: On average, negative responses were longer than positive ones (27 vs. 19 words). But for all the difficulties and challenges of the pandemic, a majority of Americans were able to think of at least one silver lining. 

Both the negative and positive impacts described in these responses cover many aspects of life, none of which were mentioned by a majority of Americans. Instead, the responses reveal a pandemic that has affected Americans’ lives in a variety of ways, of which there is no “typical” experience. Indeed, not all groups seem to have experienced the pandemic equally. For instance, younger and more educated Americans were more likely to mention silver linings, while women were more likely than men to mention challenges or difficulties.

Here are some direct quotes that reveal how Americans are processing the new reality that has upended life across the country.

901 E St. NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

© 2024 Pew Research Center

We need your support today

Independent journalism is more important than ever. Vox is here to explain this unprecedented election cycle and help you understand the larger stakes. We will break down where the candidates stand on major issues, from economic policy to immigration, foreign policy, criminal justice, and abortion. We’ll answer your biggest questions, and we’ll explain what matters — and why. This timely and essential task, however, is expensive to produce.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

by Alissa Wilkinson

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

• The Vox guide to navigating the coronavirus crisis

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

• A syllabus for the end of the world

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

• What day is it today?

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

• Vox is starting a book club. Come read with us!

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

• Recommendations

Most Popular

• What the polls show about Harris’s chances against Trump
• The state of the 2024 race, explained in 7 charts
• America isn’t ready for another war — because it doesn’t have the troops
• Take a mental break with the newest Vox crossword
• Two astronauts are stranded in space. This one is jealous.

Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Culture

Jennifer Lopez’s and Ben Affleck’s reactions to their split are both very on-brand and kind of pointless.

The back-and-forth over a wildly rare appeal is a win for victim’s rights.

Why everyone suddenly cares about Brittany Mahomes’s politics.

The second season of the series has huge news for fans of Tom Bombadil.

A newsletter about kids, for everyone.

How the once-maligned retailer quietly became a closet staple — and a stock market giant — once again.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

student opinion

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

How are you staying connected and sane in a time of social distancing?

By Jeremy Engle

Find all our Student Opinion questions here.

Note: The Times Opinion section is working on an article about how the coronavirus outbreak has disrupted the lives of high school students. To share your story, fill out this form .

The coronavirus has changed how we work , play and learn : Schools are closing, sports leagues have been canceled, and many people have been asked to work from home.

On March 16, the Trump administration released new guidelines to slow the spread of the coronavirus, including closing schools and avoiding groups of more than 10 people, discretionary travel, bars, restaurants and food courts.

How are you dealing with these sudden and dramatic changes to how we live? Are you practicing social distancing — and are you even sure what that really means?

In “ Wondering About Social Distancing? ” Apoorva Mandavilli explains the term and offers practical guidance from experts:

What is social distancing? Put simply, the idea is to maintain a distance between you and other people — in this case, at least six feet. That also means minimizing contact with people. Avoid public transportation whenever possible, limit nonessential travel, work from home and skip social gatherings — and definitely do not go to crowded bars and sporting arenas. “Every single reduction in the number of contacts you have per day with relatives, with friends, co-workers, in school will have a significant impact on the ability of the virus to spread in the population,” said Dr. Gerardo Chowell, chair of population health sciences at Georgia State University. This strategy saved thousands of lives both during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and, more recently, in Mexico City during the 2009 flu pandemic.

The article continues with expert responses to some common questions about social distancing. Here are excerpts from three:

I’m young and don’t have any risk factors. Can I continue to socialize? Please don’t. There is no question that older people and those with underlying health conditions are most vulnerable to the virus, but young people are by no means immune. And there is a greater public health imperative. Even people who show only mild symptoms may pass the virus to many, many others — particularly in the early course of the infection, before they even realize they are sick. So you might keep the chain of infection going right to your own older or high-risk relatives. You may also contribute to the number of people infected, causing the pandemic to grow rapidly and overwhelm the health care system. If you ignore the guidance on social distancing, you will essentially put yourself and everyone else at much higher risk. Experts acknowledged that social distancing is tough, especially for young people who are used to gathering in groups. But even cutting down the number of gatherings, and the number of people in any group, will help. Can I leave my house? Absolutely. The experts were unanimous in their answer to this question. It’s O.K. to go outdoors for fresh air and exercise — to walk your dog, go for a hike or ride your bicycle, for example. The point is not to remain indoors, but to avoid being in close contact with people. You may also need to leave the house for medicines or other essential resources. But there are things you can do to keep yourself and others safe during and after these excursions. When you do leave your home, wipe down any surfaces you come into contact with, disinfect your hands with an alcohol-based sanitizer and avoid touching your face. Above all, frequently wash your hands — especially whenever you come in from outside, before you eat or before you’re in contact with the very old or very young. How long will we need to practice social distancing? That is a big unknown, experts said. A lot will depend on how well the social distancing measures in place work and how much we can slow the pandemic down. But prepare to hunker down for at least a month, and possibly much longer. In Seattle, the recommendations on social distancing have continued to escalate with the number of infections and deaths, and as the health system has become increasingly strained. “For now, it’s probably indefinite,” Dr. Marrazzo said. “We’re in uncharted territory.”

Abdullah Shihipar writes in an Opinion essay, “ Coronavirus and the Isolation Paradox ,” that while social distancing is required to prevent infection, loneliness can make us sick:

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

More from TIME

Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

More Must-Reads from TIME

• How Nayib Bukele’s ‘Iron Fist’ Has Transformed El Salvador
• What Makes a Friendship Last Forever?
• How to Read Political Polls Like a Pro
• Long COVID Looks Different in Kids
• What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
• How ‘Friendshoring’ Made Southeast Asia Pivotal to the AI Revolution
• Column: Your Cynicism Isn’t Helping Anybody
• The 32 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024

Contact us at [email protected]

Log in using your username and password

• Search More Search for this keyword Advanced search
• Latest content
• Current issue
• BMJ Journals

You are here

• Volume 76, Issue 2
• COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on social relationships and health
• Article Text
• Article info
• Citation Tools
• Rapid Responses
• Article metrics

• http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1512-4471 Emily Long 1 ,
• Susan Patterson 1 ,
• Karen Maxwell 1 ,
• Carolyn Blake 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7342-4566 Raquel Bosó Pérez 1 ,
• Ruth Lewis 1 ,
• Mark McCann 1 ,
• Julie Riddell 1 ,
• Kathryn Skivington 1 ,
• Rachel Wilson-Lowe 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4409-6601 Kirstin R Mitchell 2
• 1 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , UK
• 2 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Institute of Health & Wellbeing , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , UK
• Correspondence to Dr Emily Long, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G3 7HR, UK; emily.long{at}glasgow.ac.uk

This essay examines key aspects of social relationships that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses explicitly on relational mechanisms of health and brings together theory and emerging evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to make recommendations for future public health policy and recovery. We first provide an overview of the pandemic in the UK context, outlining the nature of the public health response. We then introduce four distinct domains of social relationships: social networks, social support, social interaction and intimacy, highlighting the mechanisms through which the pandemic and associated public health response drastically altered social interactions in each domain. Throughout the essay, the lens of health inequalities, and perspective of relationships as interconnecting elements in a broader system, is used to explore the varying impact of these disruptions. The essay concludes by providing recommendations for longer term recovery ensuring that the social relational cost of COVID-19 is adequately considered in efforts to rebuild.

• inequalities

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable as no data sets generated and/or analysed for this study. Data sharing not applicable as no data sets generated or analysed for this essay.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2021-216690

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request permissions.

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Introduction

Infectious disease pandemics, including SARS and COVID-19, demand intrapersonal behaviour change and present highly complex challenges for public health. 1 A pandemic of an airborne infection, spread easily through social contact, assails human relationships by drastically altering the ways through which humans interact. In this essay, we draw on theories of social relationships to examine specific ways in which relational mechanisms key to health and well-being were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Relational mechanisms refer to the processes between people that lead to change in health outcomes.

At the time of writing, the future surrounding COVID-19 was uncertain. Vaccine programmes were being rolled out in countries that could afford them, but new and more contagious variants of the virus were also being discovered. The recovery journey looked long, with continued disruption to social relationships. The social cost of COVID-19 was only just beginning to emerge, but the mental health impact was already considerable, 2 3 and the inequality of the health burden stark. 4 Knowledge of the epidemiology of COVID-19 accrued rapidly, but evidence of the most effective policy responses remained uncertain.

The initial response to COVID-19 in the UK was reactive and aimed at reducing mortality, with little time to consider the social implications, including for interpersonal and community relationships. The terminology of ‘social distancing’ quickly became entrenched both in public and policy discourse. This equation of physical distance with social distance was regrettable, since only physical proximity causes viral transmission, whereas many forms of social proximity (eg, conversations while walking outdoors) are minimal risk, and are crucial to maintaining relationships supportive of health and well-being.

The aim of this essay is to explore four key relational mechanisms that were impacted by the pandemic and associated restrictions: social networks, social support, social interaction and intimacy. We use relational theories and emerging research on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response to make three key recommendations: one regarding public health responses; and two regarding social recovery. Our understanding of these mechanisms stems from a ‘systems’ perspective which casts social relationships as interdependent elements within a connected whole. 5

Social networks

Social networks characterise the individuals and social connections that compose a system (such as a workplace, community or society). Social relationships range from spouses and partners, to coworkers, friends and acquaintances. They vary across many dimensions, including, for example, frequency of contact and emotional closeness. Social networks can be understood both in terms of the individuals and relationships that compose the network, as well as the overall network structure (eg, how many of your friends know each other).

Social networks show a tendency towards homophily, or a phenomenon of associating with individuals who are similar to self. 6 This is particularly true for ‘core’ network ties (eg, close friends), while more distant, sometimes called ‘weak’ ties tend to show more diversity. During the height of COVID-19 restrictions, face-to-face interactions were often reduced to core network members, such as partners, family members or, potentially, live-in roommates; some ‘weak’ ties were lost, and interactions became more limited to those closest. Given that peripheral, weaker social ties provide a diversity of resources, opinions and support, 7 COVID-19 likely resulted in networks that were smaller and more homogenous.

Such changes were not inevitable nor necessarily enduring, since social networks are also adaptive and responsive to change, in that a disruption to usual ways of interacting can be replaced by new ways of engaging (eg, Zoom). Yet, important inequalities exist, wherein networks and individual relationships within networks are not equally able to adapt to such changes. For example, individuals with a large number of newly established relationships (eg, university students) may have struggled to transfer these relationships online, resulting in lost contacts and a heightened risk of social isolation. This is consistent with research suggesting that young adults were the most likely to report a worsening of relationships during COVID-19, whereas older adults were the least likely to report a change. 8

Lastly, social connections give rise to emergent properties of social systems, 9 where a community-level phenomenon develops that cannot be attributed to any one member or portion of the network. For example, local area-based networks emerged due to geographic restrictions (eg, stay-at-home orders), resulting in increases in neighbourly support and local volunteering. 10 In fact, research suggests that relationships with neighbours displayed the largest net gain in ratings of relationship quality compared with a range of relationship types (eg, partner, colleague, friend). 8 Much of this was built from spontaneous individual interactions within local communities, which together contributed to the ‘community spirit’ that many experienced. 11 COVID-19 restrictions thus impacted the personal social networks and the structure of the larger networks within the society.

Social support

Social support, referring to the psychological and material resources provided through social interaction, is a critical mechanism through which social relationships benefit health. In fact, social support has been shown to be one of the most important resilience factors in the aftermath of stressful events. 12 In the context of COVID-19, the usual ways in which individuals interact and obtain social support have been severely disrupted.

One such disruption has been to opportunities for spontaneous social interactions. For example, conversations with colleagues in a break room offer an opportunity for socialising beyond one’s core social network, and these peripheral conversations can provide a form of social support. 13 14 A chance conversation may lead to advice helpful to coping with situations or seeking formal help. Thus, the absence of these spontaneous interactions may mean the reduction of indirect support-seeking opportunities. While direct support-seeking behaviour is more effective at eliciting support, it also requires significantly more effort and may be perceived as forceful and burdensome. 15 The shift to homeworking and closure of community venues reduced the number of opportunities for these spontaneous interactions to occur, and has, second, focused them locally. Consequently, individuals whose core networks are located elsewhere, or who live in communities where spontaneous interaction is less likely, have less opportunity to benefit from spontaneous in-person supportive interactions.

However, alongside this disruption, new opportunities to interact and obtain social support have arisen. The surge in community social support during the initial lockdown mirrored that often seen in response to adverse events (eg, natural disasters 16 ). COVID-19 restrictions that confined individuals to their local area also compelled them to focus their in-person efforts locally. Commentators on the initial lockdown in the UK remarked on extraordinary acts of generosity between individuals who belonged to the same community but were unknown to each other. However, research on adverse events also tells us that such community support is not necessarily maintained in the longer term. 16

Meanwhile, online forms of social support are not bound by geography, thus enabling interactions and social support to be received from a wider network of people. Formal online social support spaces (eg, support groups) existed well before COVID-19, but have vastly increased since. While online interactions can increase perceived social support, it is unclear whether remote communication technologies provide an effective substitute from in-person interaction during periods of social distancing. 17 18 It makes intuitive sense that the usefulness of online social support will vary by the type of support offered, degree of social interaction and ‘online communication skills’ of those taking part. Youth workers, for instance, have struggled to keep vulnerable youth engaged in online youth clubs, 19 despite others finding a positive association between amount of digital technology used by individuals during lockdown and perceived social support. 20 Other research has found that more frequent face-to-face contact and phone/video contact both related to lower levels of depression during the time period of March to August 2020, but the negative effect of a lack of contact was greater for those with higher levels of usual sociability. 21 Relatedly, important inequalities in social support exist, such that individuals who occupy more socially disadvantaged positions in society (eg, low socioeconomic status, older people) tend to have less access to social support, 22 potentially exacerbated by COVID-19.

Social and interactional norms

Interactional norms are key relational mechanisms which build trust, belonging and identity within and across groups in a system. Individuals in groups and societies apply meaning by ‘approving, arranging and redefining’ symbols of interaction. 23 A handshake, for instance, is a powerful symbol of trust and equality. Depending on context, not shaking hands may symbolise a failure to extend friendship, or a failure to reach agreement. The norms governing these symbols represent shared values and identity; and mutual understanding of these symbols enables individuals to achieve orderly interactions, establish supportive relationship accountability and connect socially. 24 25

Physical distancing measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 radically altered these norms of interaction, particularly those used to convey trust, affinity, empathy and respect (eg, hugging, physical comforting). 26 As epidemic waves rose and fell, the work to negotiate these norms required intense cognitive effort; previously taken-for-granted interactions were re-examined, factoring in current restriction levels, own and (assumed) others’ vulnerability and tolerance of risk. This created awkwardness, and uncertainty, for example, around how to bring closure to an in-person interaction or convey warmth. The instability in scripted ways of interacting created particular strain for individuals who already struggled to encode and decode interactions with others (eg, those who are deaf or have autism spectrum disorder); difficulties often intensified by mask wearing. 27

Large social gatherings—for example, weddings, school assemblies, sporting events—also present key opportunities for affirming and assimilating interactional norms, building cohesion and shared identity and facilitating cooperation across social groups. 28 Online ‘equivalents’ do not easily support ‘social-bonding’ activities such as singing and dancing, and rarely enable chance/spontaneous one-on-one conversations with peripheral/weaker network ties (see the Social networks section) which can help strengthen bonds across a larger network. The loss of large gatherings to celebrate rites of passage (eg, bar mitzvah, weddings) has additional relational costs since these events are performed by and for communities to reinforce belonging, and to assist in transitioning to new phases of life. 29 The loss of interaction with diverse others via community and large group gatherings also reduces intergroup contact, which may then tend towards more prejudiced outgroup attitudes. While online interaction can go some way to mimicking these interaction norms, there are key differences. A sense of anonymity, and lack of in-person emotional cues, tends to support norms of polarisation and aggression in expressing differences of opinion online. And while online platforms have potential to provide intergroup contact, the tendency of much social media to form homogeneous ‘echo chambers’ can serve to further reduce intergroup contact. 30 31

Intimacy relates to the feeling of emotional connection and closeness with other human beings. Emotional connection, through romantic, friendship or familial relationships, fulfils a basic human need 32 and strongly benefits health, including reduced stress levels, improved mental health, lowered blood pressure and reduced risk of heart disease. 32 33 Intimacy can be fostered through familiarity, feeling understood and feeling accepted by close others. 34

Intimacy via companionship and closeness is fundamental to mental well-being. Positively, the COVID-19 pandemic has offered opportunities for individuals to (re)connect and (re)strengthen close relationships within their household via quality time together, following closure of many usual external social activities. Research suggests that the first full UK lockdown period led to a net gain in the quality of steady relationships at a population level, 35 but amplified existing inequalities in relationship quality. 35 36 For some in single-person households, the absence of a companion became more conspicuous, leading to feelings of loneliness and lower mental well-being. 37 38 Additional pandemic-related relational strain 39 40 resulted, for some, in the initiation or intensification of domestic abuse. 41 42

Physical touch is another key aspect of intimacy, a fundamental human need crucial in maintaining and developing intimacy within close relationships. 34 Restrictions on social interactions severely restricted the number and range of people with whom physical affection was possible. The reduction in opportunity to give and receive affectionate physical touch was not experienced equally. Many of those living alone found themselves completely without physical contact for extended periods. The deprivation of physical touch is evidenced to take a heavy emotional toll. 43 Even in future, once physical expressions of affection can resume, new levels of anxiety over germs may introduce hesitancy into previously fluent blending of physical and verbal intimate social connections. 44

The pandemic also led to shifts in practices and norms around sexual relationship building and maintenance, as individuals adapted and sought alternative ways of enacting sexual intimacy. This too is important, given that intimate sexual activity has known benefits for health. 45 46 Given that social restrictions hinged on reducing household mixing, possibilities for partnered sexual activity were primarily guided by living arrangements. While those in cohabiting relationships could potentially continue as before, those who were single or in non-cohabiting relationships generally had restricted opportunities to maintain their sexual relationships. Pornography consumption and digital partners were reported to increase since lockdown. 47 However, online interactions are qualitatively different from in-person interactions and do not provide the same opportunities for physical intimacy.

Recommendations and conclusions

In the sections above we have outlined the ways in which COVID-19 has impacted social relationships, showing how relational mechanisms key to health have been undermined. While some of the damage might well self-repair after the pandemic, there are opportunities inherent in deliberative efforts to build back in ways that facilitate greater resilience in social and community relationships. We conclude by making three recommendations: one regarding public health responses to the pandemic; and two regarding social recovery.

Recommendation 1: explicitly count the relational cost of public health policies to control the pandemic

Effective handling of a pandemic recognises that social, economic and health concerns are intricately interwoven. It is clear that future research and policy attention must focus on the social consequences. As described above, policies which restrict physical mixing across households carry heavy and unequal relational costs. These include for individuals (eg, loss of intimate touch), dyads (eg, loss of warmth, comfort), networks (eg, restricted access to support) and communities (eg, loss of cohesion and identity). Such costs—and their unequal impact—should not be ignored in short-term efforts to control an epidemic. Some public health responses—restrictions on international holiday travel and highly efficient test and trace systems—have relatively small relational costs and should be prioritised. At a national level, an earlier move to proportionate restrictions, and investment in effective test and trace systems, may help prevent escalation of spread to the point where a national lockdown or tight restrictions became an inevitability. Where policies with relational costs are unavoidable, close attention should be paid to the unequal relational impact for those whose personal circumstances differ from normative assumptions of two adult families. This includes consideration of whether expectations are fair (eg, for those who live alone), whether restrictions on social events are equitable across age group, religious/ethnic groupings and social class, and also to ensure that the language promoted by such policies (eg, households; families) is not exclusionary. 48 49 Forethought to unequal impacts on social relationships should thus be integral to the work of epidemic preparedness teams.

Recommendation 2: intelligently balance online and offline ways of relating

A key ingredient for well-being is ‘getting together’ in a physical sense. This is fundamental to a human need for intimate touch, physical comfort, reinforcing interactional norms and providing practical support. Emerging evidence suggests that online ways of relating cannot simply replace physical interactions. But online interaction has many benefits and for some it offers connections that did not exist previously. In particular, online platforms provide new forms of support for those unable to access offline services because of mobility issues (eg, older people) or because they are geographically isolated from their support community (eg, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) youth). Ultimately, multiple forms of online and offline social interactions are required to meet the needs of varying groups of people (eg, LGBTQ, older people). Future research and practice should aim to establish ways of using offline and online support in complementary and even synergistic ways, rather than veering between them as social restrictions expand and contract. Intelligent balancing of online and offline ways of relating also pertains to future policies on home and flexible working. A decision to switch to wholesale or obligatory homeworking should consider the risk to relational ‘group properties’ of the workplace community and their impact on employees’ well-being, focusing in particular on unequal impacts (eg, new vs established employees). Intelligent blending of online and in-person working is required to achieve flexibility while also nurturing supportive networks at work. Intelligent balance also implies strategies to build digital literacy and minimise digital exclusion, as well as coproducing solutions with intended beneficiaries.

Recommendation 3: build stronger and sustainable localised communities

In balancing offline and online ways of interacting, there is opportunity to capitalise on the potential for more localised, coherent communities due to scaled-down travel, homeworking and local focus that will ideally continue after restrictions end. There are potential economic benefits after the pandemic, such as increased trade as home workers use local resources (eg, coffee shops), but also relational benefits from stronger relationships around the orbit of the home and neighbourhood. Experience from previous crises shows that community volunteer efforts generated early on will wane over time in the absence of deliberate work to maintain them. Adequately funded partnerships between local government, third sector and community groups are required to sustain community assets that began as a direct response to the pandemic. Such partnerships could work to secure green spaces and indoor (non-commercial) meeting spaces that promote community interaction. Green spaces in particular provide a triple benefit in encouraging physical activity and mental health, as well as facilitating social bonding. 50 In building local communities, small community networks—that allow for diversity and break down ingroup/outgroup views—may be more helpful than the concept of ‘support bubbles’, which are exclusionary and less sustainable in the longer term. Rigorously designed intervention and evaluation—taking a systems approach—will be crucial in ensuring scale-up and sustainability.

The dramatic change to social interaction necessitated by efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 created stark challenges but also opportunities. Our essay highlights opportunities for learning, both to ensure the equity and humanity of physical restrictions, and to sustain the salutogenic effects of social relationships going forward. The starting point for capitalising on this learning is recognition of the disruption to relational mechanisms as a key part of the socioeconomic and health impact of the pandemic. In recovery planning, a general rule is that what is good for decreasing health inequalities (such as expanding social protection and public services and pursuing green inclusive growth strategies) 4 will also benefit relationships and safeguard relational mechanisms for future generations. Putting this into action will require political will.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Not required.

• Office for National Statistics (ONS)
• Ford T , et al
• Riordan R ,
• Ford J , et al
• Glonti K , et al
• McPherson JM ,
• Smith-Lovin L
• Granovetter MS
• Fancourt D et al
• Stadtfeld C
• Office for Civil Society
• Cook J et al
• Rodriguez-Llanes JM ,
• Guha-Sapir D
• Patulny R et al
• Granovetter M
• Winkeler M ,
• Filipp S-H ,
• Kaniasty K ,
• de Terte I ,
• Guilaran J , et al
• Wright KB ,
• Martin J et al
• Gabbiadini A ,
• Baldissarri C ,
• Durante F , et al
• Sommerlad A ,
• Marston L ,
• Huntley J , et al
• Turner RJ ,
• Bicchieri C
• Brennan G et al
• Watson-Jones RE ,
• Amichai-Hamburger Y ,
• McKenna KYA
• Page-Gould E ,
• Aron A , et al
• Pietromonaco PR ,
• Timmerman GM
• Bradbury-Jones C ,
• Mikocka-Walus A ,
• Klas A , et al
• Marshall L ,
• Steptoe A ,
• Stanley SM ,
• Campbell AM
• ↵ (ONS), O.f.N.S., Domestic abuse during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, England and Wales . Available: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabuseduringthecoronaviruscovid19pandemicenglandandwales/november2020
• Rosenberg M ,
• Hensel D , et al
• Banerjee D ,
• Bruner DW , et al
• Bavel JJV ,
• Baicker K ,
• Boggio PS , et al
• van Barneveld K ,
• Quinlan M ,
• Kriesler P , et al
• Mitchell R ,
• de Vries S , et al

Twitter @karenmaxSPHSU, @Mark_McCann, @Rwilsonlowe, @KMitchinGlasgow

Contributors EL and KM led on the manuscript conceptualisation, review and editing. SP, KM, CB, RBP, RL, MM, JR, KS and RW-L contributed to drafting and revising the article. All authors assisted in revising the final draft.

Funding The research reported in this publication was supported by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_00022/1, MC_UU_00022/3) and the Chief Scientist Office (SPHSU11, SPHSU14). EL is also supported by MRC Skills Development Fellowship Award (MR/S015078/1). KS and MM are also supported by a Medical Research Council Strategic Award (MC_PC_13027).

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Read the full text or download the PDF:

Two Years In: How the Pandemic Changed Our Lives

From remote work to major life developments, the COVID-19 era left its mark on Duke staff and faculty

• Share this story on facebook
• Share this story on twitter
• Share this story on reddit
• Share this story on linkedin
• Get this story's permalink
• Print this story

Two years ago this week, the novel coronavirus fully took hold in the United States. While it had been in the country earlier, the second week of March 2020 was when cases spiked, and soon after, Duke University President Vincent E. Price announced in an “urgent message” that faculty and staff who could work from home should do so. 

Masking and social distancing policies became the norm while businesses, schools and offices went quiet.

As some  safety measures ease , COVID-19 has infected nearly 80 million Americans and left nearly 970,000 dead. As the pandemic raged with variants, education, research and health care continued across Duke University and Duke University Health System at a high level. 

And many of us are forever changed.

“I think we, as a people, are different,” said Duke Associate Professor of Medicine Jon Bae, a co-convener for the mental and emotional well-being portion of Healthy Duke. “In the last two years, people have learned different ways of working, different ways of living and different ways to take appreciation for things.”

Jon Boylan is one of those. 

The past two years have drawn Boylan closer to his wife, Katie, a steadying influence during uncertain times. But starting a family against the backdrop of a global pandemic has given him a deeper respect for how forces outside of our control can alter plans.

“I wasn’t one of those people who had time to learn how to bake bread or anything,” Boylan said. “But I think in terms of personal growth, a lot happened.”

We caught up with some Duke colleagues to hear how their lives are different two years into the pandemic.

Committing to Self-Care

“For me, I thought, ‘How do I have a rich, full life amid all of this and keep a positive attitude?’” Thomas said.

She decided that she needed a goal that she could work toward until the world opened up. Already with a long list of outdoors adventures under her belt, Thomas decided to plan a summer 2021 trip to Nepal to hike the summit of the 21,247-foot Mera Peak.

For the next several months, Thomas began running, working out at a socially distanced gym, and incorporating as many walks as possible into her day. While the trip to Nepal was the goal, the exercise to prepare for it became a central piece of her self-care routine.

“I just love being outside, it’s very restorative,” Thomas said. “And I like physical challenges, I get the rush of endorphins from that. So putting those two things together just helps me out mentally. Even just a short walk can help me focus.”

Eventually, travel complications required Thomas to postpone the trip to Nepal. Instead, she flew to Spain and, over three weeks in September and October of 2021, she hiked 335 miles on the Camino de Santiago pilgrim trail.

“It was basically like a walking meditation for three weeks,” said Thomas, who is now exercising with an eye toward a 2023 Nepal trip. “It’s really an incredible experience.”

Defining Your Purpose

But she said COVID-19 tested everyone’s resolve.

“You just don’t know how you’re going to react to something until you’re in it,” Casey said.

In March 2020, Casey was the clinical team lead for Duke Raleigh’s ICU, a managerial role with less hands-on patient care. But it wasn’t far into the pandemic before Casey’s desire to help patients led her to return to a clinical nurse role.

There, she saw the virus’ danger up close. At one point in the summer of 2020, 13 of the 15 beds in the ICU were occupied by COVID-19 patients on ventilators. With no visitors allowed for COVID-19 patients, Casey witnessed several wrenching goodbyes said over cellphone.

Her challenges didn’t end when she left work. With four children and a husband who’s a police officer in Durham, at home, Casey faced stress from home schooling and a spouse also on COVID-19’s front lines.

While many ICU nurses ask to be transferred to different units due to the emotional strain, Casey was inspired by seeing colleagues bravely push forward, giving comfort and dignity to patients facing dire situations. She also said that, as the pandemic wore on, the bond between ICU nurses grew stronger. 

As hard as these past two years have been, Casey, who still serves in the ICU and recently began working toward an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner certificate through the Duke University School of Nursing , said the pandemic experience has only deepened her connection to her work.

“We all faced this as a challenge, personally, emotionally and professionally, and hopefully learned to grow through it and be better if this ever happens again,” Casey said.

Taking Charge of Physical Health

After the pandemic required many Duke staff and faculty members to work remotely , sending Carbuccia from working in the bustling Smith Warehouse to his Mebane home, the IT Analyst with  Duke’s Office of Information Technology  found himself making healthier choices without even thinking. 

Instead of eating lunch out or grabbing meals from events in his on-campus workspace, Carbuccia found himself eating homemade breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Scrambled eggs with vegetables, or simply prepared salmon filets are some of current favorites.

And without a commute, he has time for walks around his neighborhood before and after work.

Carbuccia saw the result of these changes a few months into the pandemic when he stepped on the scale and saw that he’d lost 26 pounds.

“When I stepped on the scale, I said, ‘Holy Moses! I lost a lot of weight, and I wasn’t even planning to!’” Carbuccia said.

A Better Mental Space

And each day also involved a roughly 30-minute commute along I-85 to her home in Graham, where the heavy traffic made her feel especially anxious, leaving her tense when she arrived at work or home.

But the past two years saw her work go fully remote, and now a move to a hybrid arrangement featuring one day of on-site each week. She cherishes the time she can spend working from home, often with her two dogs – Marx, a Boston Terrier, and Duke, a rescue – lounging at her feet.

“Working at home, I feel like my mental health is in a better place,” said Herrera, a wife and mother of three.

Herrera isn’t alone in her appreciation of remote work.  According to a Pew Research Center  report  from February 2022, approximately six in 10 workers who can do their jobs from home are working remotely most or all of the time.  

Herrera said her hybrid schedule leaves her feeling mentally fresh when she begins her workday and better able to transition between work and personal life. 

“I’m happier,” Herrera said. “I’m more at ease.”

Learning on the Fly

“Even though some of us had experience working remotely, it was still new,” said Roberts, who’s worked at Duke for nearly a decade. “Regardless of how much experience you had, I don’t think we were mentally or technologically ready for that quick of a transition.”

Roberts recalls PRMO leaders moving quickly to get desktops, monitors, laptops, cameras and headsets in the hands of team members. She also recalls many of her colleagues working diligently to familiarize themselves with new tools and programs, such as the collaboration platform Jabber, that were different from what was used in the PRMO offices on South Alston Avenue in Durham. 

Roberts and her colleagues also had to learn how to collaborate with one another when communication came by email and chat messages instead of a quick face-to-face conversation.

Working each day from her home in Franklinton, Roberts continues to help Duke Health patients with billing concerns. She’s part of a large team that gelled amid the pandemic and kept the pace of customer support high.

With PRMO keeping colleagues connected with department meetings and team-building Zoom events, Roberts said these past two years have given her a new appreciation of the resilience of her colleagues.

“It made me proud because nobody skipped a beat,” Roberts said. “Everybody took accountability. While some of our thinking and the logic behind how we normally do things had to change, I’m proud that it was still a really seamless transition for us.”

Finding Flexibility

“This is something that would have never happened before the pandemic,” said Atkinson, a regulatory coordinator with the  Duke Department of Surgery .

Like many administrators in Duke’s research areas, Atkinson has been working fully remote since the pandemic began, trading in her fourth-floor workspace in Erwin Terrace for a spot at home. The change reshaped Atkinson’s day-to-day routine in a drastic way, ridding her of a commute that ate up two hours each day.

Now, with more time to spend with her son, West, born before the pandemic, and her 10-month-old daughter, Iris, Atkinson, who has worked for Duke for nearly seven years, has the flexibility that allows her to feel rooted. And with more balance, she hopes to let the roots of her family, as well as the cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers that will be in the ground soon, grow strong.

“I’ve attempted a very small garden each year, but we have a very shady lot,” Atkinson said. “But this year, we’re putting it in the front, where we get a lot of sun, and West is helping me, so it’s going to work.”

A World of Change

In late 2019, she met Neil Gallagher at a party and hit it off. The pair dated for the next few months and, when the pandemic forced everyone to limit contact with others, they decided to keep each other in their quarantine bubble.

“It was one of those easy connections where we were really comfortable with each other,” said Meyer, who shared the  story of her mental health journey  with Working@Duke just before the coronavirus outbreak.

Over the next several months, the pair grew closer and, by the end of 2020, they’d begun talking about getting engaged and starting a family. Those plans hit warp speed when they found out Meyer was pregnant in early 2021. Not long after, they were engaged and later married in a small ceremony in Raleigh in July of last year.

And over a few hectic days in early October, the pair closed on a house together in Raleigh and Meyer gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Maggie.

Now in a very different spot in life from where she was when the pandemic began, Meyer said she greets each day with a new feeling of purpose and strong sense of gratitude.

“I think my husband and I have been keenly aware of how odd it’s been and how many blessing we’ve had at a time when life has been really hard for a lot of people,” Meyer said.

How has the pandemic changed your life? Send us your story and photographs through  our story idea form  or write  [email protected] .

Follow Working@Duke on  Twitter  and  Facebook .

Link to this page

Copy and paste the URL below to share this page.

Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

Print article

For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

• The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
• The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
• The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
• Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

• Are my experiences different from others’?
• Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
• Am I aware of my privilege?
• Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
• Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

• Grading scales and policies
• Graduation requirements
• Instructional methods
• Schedules and course offerings
• Testing requirements
• Your academic calendar
• Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

• One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
• One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
• Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

Homes Nearby

Homes for rent and sale near schools

How our schools are (and aren't) addressing race

The truth about homework in America

What should I write my college essay about?

What the #%@!& should I write about in my college essay?

Yes! Sign me up for updates relevant to my child's grade.

Please enter a valid email address

Thank you for signing up!

Server Issue: Please try again later. Sorry for the inconvenience

How COVID-19 pandemic changed my life

Table of Contents

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the biggest challenges that our world has ever faced. People around the globe were affected in some way by this terrible disease, whether personally or not. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many people felt isolated and in a state of panic. They often found themselves lacking a sense of community, confidence, and trust. The health systems in many countries were able to successfully prevent and treat people with COVID-19-related diseases while providing early intervention services to those who may not be fully aware that they are infected (Rume & Islam, 2020). Personally, this pandemic has brought numerous changes and challenges to my life. The COVID-19 pandemic affected my social, academic, and economic lifestyle positively and negatively.

Social and Academic Changes

One of the changes brought by the pandemic was economic changes that occurred very drastically (Haleem, Javaid, & Vaishya, 2020). During the pandemic, food prices started to rise, affecting the amount of money my parents could spend on goods and services. We had to reduce the food we bought as our budgets were stretched. My family also had to eliminate unhealthy food bought in bulk, such as crisps and chocolate bars. Furthermore, the pandemic made us more aware of the importance of keeping our homes clean, especially regarding cooking food. Lastly, it also made us more aware of how we talked to other people when they were ill and stayed home with them rather than being out and getting on with other things.

Furthermore, COVID-19 had a significant effect on my academic life. Immediately, measures to curb the pandemic were announced, such as closing all learning institutions in the country; my school life changed. The change began when our school implemented the online education system to ensure that we continued with our education during the lockdown period. At first, this affected me negatively because when learning was not happening in a formal environment, I struggled academically since I was not getting the face-to-face interaction with the teachers I needed. Furthermore, forcing us to attend online caused my classmates and me to feel disconnected from the knowledge being taught because we were unable to have peer participation in class. However, as the pandemic subsided, we grew accustomed to this learning mode. We realized the effects on our performance and learning satisfaction were positive, as it seemed to promote emotional and behavioral changes necessary to function in a virtual world. Students who participated in e-learning during the pandemic developed more ownership of the course requirement, increased their emotional intelligence and self-awareness, improved their communication skills, and learned to work together as a community.

If there is an area that the pandemic affected was the mental health of my family and myself. The COVID-19 pandemic caused increased anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns that were difficult for my family and me to manage alone. Our ability to learn social resilience skills, such as self-management, was tested numerous times. One of the most visible challenges we faced was social isolation and loneliness. The multiple lockdowns made it difficult to interact with my friends and family, leading to loneliness. The changes in communication exacerbated the problem as interactions moved from face-to-face to online communication using social media and text messages. Furthermore, having family members and loved ones separated from us due to distance, unavailability of phones, and the internet created a situation of fear among us, as we did not know whether they were all right. Moreover, some people within my circle found it more challenging to communicate with friends, family, and co-workers due to poor communication skills. This was mainly attributed to anxiety or a higher risk of spreading the disease. It was also related to a poor understanding of creating and maintaining relationships during this period.

Positive Changes

In addition, this pandemic has brought some positive changes with it. First, it had been a significant catalyst for strengthening relationships and neighborhood ties. It has encouraged a sense of community because family members, neighbors, friends, and community members within my area were all working together to help each other out. Before the pandemic, everybody focused on their business, the children going to school while the older people went to work. There was not enough time to bond with each other. Well, the pandemic changed that, something that has continued until now that everything is returning to normal. In our home, it strengthened the relationship between myself and my siblings and parents. This is because we started spending more time together as a family, which enhanced our sense of understanding of ourselves.

The pandemic has been a challenging time for many people. I can confidently state that it was a significant and potentially unprecedented change in our daily life. By changing how we do things and relate with our family and friends, the pandemic has shaped our future life experiences and shown that during crises, we can come together and make a difference in each other’s lives. Therefore, I embrace wholesomely the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic in my life.

• Haleem, A., Javaid, M., & Vaishya, R. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 pandemic in daily life.  Current medicine research and practice ,  10 (2), 78.
• Rume, T., & Islam, S. D. U. (2020). Environmental effects of COVID-19 pandemic and potential strategies of sustainability.  Heliyon ,  6 (9), e04965.
• ☠️ Assisted Suicide
• Affordable Care Act
• Breast Cancer
• Genetic Engineering

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction

Horrific history

The early days, health and medicine.

What was the impact of COVID-19?

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Table Of Contents

On February 25, 2020, a top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided it was time to level with the U.S. public about the COVID-19 outbreak. At the time, there were just 57 people in the country confirmed to have the infection, all but 14 having been repatriated from Hubei province in China and the Diamond Princess cruise ship , docked off Yokohama , Japan .

The infected were in quarantine. But Nancy Messonnier, then head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, knew what was coming. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Messonnier said at a news briefing.

“I understand this whole situation may seem overwhelming and that disruption to everyday life may be severe,” she continued. “But these are things that people need to start thinking about now.”

Looking back, the COVID-19 pandemic stands as arguably the most disruptive event of the 21st century, surpassing wars, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks , the effects of climate change , and the Great Recession . It has killed more than seven million people to date and reshaped the world economy, public health , education, work, social interaction, family life, medicine, and mental health—leaving no corner of the globe untouched in some way. Now endemic in many societies, the consistently mutating virus remains one of the leading annual causes of death, especially among people older than 65 and the immunosuppressed.

“The coronavirus outbreak, historically, beyond a doubt, has been the most devastating pandemic of an infectious disease that global society has experienced in well over 100 years, since the 1918 influenza pandemic ,” Anthony Fauci , who helped lead the U.S. government’s health response to the pandemic under Pres. Donald Trump and became Pres. Joe Biden ’s chief medical adviser, told Encyclopædia Britannica in 2024.

“I think the impact of this outbreak on the world in general, on the United States, is really historic. Fifty years from now, 100 years from now, when they talk about the history of what we’ve been through, this is going to go down equally with the 1918 influenza pandemic , with the stock market crash of 1929 , with World War II —all the things that were profoundly disruptive of the social order.”

What few could imagine in the first days of the pandemic was the extent of the disruption the disease would bring to the everyday lives of just about everyone around the globe.

Within weeks, schools and child-care centers began shuttering, businesses sent their workforces home, public gatherings were canceled, stores and restaurants closed, and cruise ships were barred from sailing. On March 11, actor Tom Hanks announced that he had COVID-19, and the NBA suspended its season. (It was ultimately completed in a closed “bubble” at Walt Disney World .) On March 12, as college basketball players left courts mid-game during conference tournaments, the NCAA announced that it would not hold its wildly popular season-ending national competition, known as March Madness , for the first time since 1939. Three days later, the New York City public school system, the country’s largest, with 1.1 million students, closed. On March 19, all 40 million Californians were placed under a stay-at-home order.

By mid-April, with hospital beds and ventilators in critically short supply, workers were burying the coffins of COVID-19 victims in mass graves on Hart Island, off the Bronx . At first, the public embraced caregivers. New Yorkers applauded them from windows and balconies, and individuals sewed masks for them. But that spirit soon gave way to the crushing long-term reality of the pandemic and the national division that followed.

Around the world, it was worse. On the day Messonnier spoke, the virus had spread from its origin point in Wuhan , China, to at least two dozen countries, sickening thousands and killing dozens. By April 4, more than one million cases had been confirmed worldwide. Some countries, including China and Italy, imposed strict lockdowns on their citizens. Paris restricted movement, with certain exceptions, including an hour a day for exercise, within 1 km (0.62 mile) of home.

In the United States , the threat posed by the virus did not keep large crowds from gathering to protest the May 25 slaying of George Floyd , a 46-year-old Black man, by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin. The murder, taped by a bystander in Minneapolis , Minnesota , sparked raucous and sometimes violent street protests for racial justice around the world that contributed to an overall sense of societal instability.

The official World Health Organization total of more than seven million deaths as of March 2024 is widely considered a serious undercount of the actual toll. In some countries there was limited testing for the virus and difficulty attributing fatalities to it. Others suppressed total counts or were not able to devote resources to compiling their totals. In May 2021, a panel of experts consulted by The New York Times estimated that India ’s actual COVID-19 death toll was likely 1.6 million, more than five times the reported total of 307,231.

An average of 3,100 people—one every 28 seconds—died of COVID-19 every day in the United States in January 2021.

When “ excess mortality”—COVID and non-COVID deaths that likely would not have occurred under normal, pre-outbreak conditions—are included in the worldwide tally, the number of pandemic victims was about 15 million by the end of 2021, WHO estimated.

Not long after the pandemic took hold, the United States, which spends more per capita on medical care than any other country, became the epicenter of COVID-19 fatalities. The country fell victim to a fractured health care system that is inequitable to poor and rural patients and people of color, as well as a deep ideological divide over its political leadership and public health policies, such as wearing protective face masks. By early 2024, the U.S. had recorded nearly 1.2 million COVID-19 deaths.

Life expectancy at birth plunged from 78.8 years in 2019 to 76.4 in 2021, a staggering decline in a barometer of a country’s health that typically changes by only a tenth or two annually. An average of 3,100 people—one every 28 seconds—died of COVID-19 every day in the United States in January 2021, before vaccines for the virus became widely available, The Washington Post reported.

The impact on those caring for the sick and dying was profound. “The second week of December [2020] was probably the worst week of my career,” said Brad Butcher, director of the medical-surgical intensive care unit at UPMC Mercy hospital in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania. “The first day I was on service, five patients died in a shift. And then I came back the next day, and three patients died. And I came back the next day, and three more patients died. And it was completely defeating,” he told The Washington Post on January 11, 2021.

“We can’t get the graves dug fast enough,” a Maryland funeral home operator told The Washington Post that same day.

As the pandemic surged in waves around the world, country after country was plunged into economic recession , the inevitable damage caused by layoffs, business closures, lockdowns, deaths, reduced trade, debt repayment moratoriums , the cost to governments of responding to the crisis, and other factors. Overall, the virus triggered the greatest economic calamity in more than a century, according to a 2022 report by the World Bank .

“Economic activity contracted in 2020 in about 90 percent of countries, exceeding the number of countries seeing such declines during two world wars, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the emerging economy debt crises of the 1980s, and the 2007–09 global financial crisis,” the report noted. “In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy shrank by approximately 3 percent, and global poverty increased for the first time in a generation.”

A 2020 study that attempted to aggregate the costs of lost gross domestic product (GDP) estimated that premature deaths and health-related losses in the United States totaled more than $16 trillion, or roughly “90% of the annual GDP of the United States. For a family of 4, the estimated loss would be nearly $200,000.”

In April 2020, the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 14.7 percent, higher than at any point since the Great Depression. There were 23.1 million people out of work. The hospitality, leisure, and health care industries were especially hard hit. Consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the U.S. economy, plunged.

With workers at home, many businesses turned to telework, a development that would persist beyond the pandemic and radically change working conditions for millions. In 2023, 12.7 percent of full-time U.S. employees worked from home and 28.2 percent worked a hybrid office-home schedule, according to Forbes Advisor . Urban centers accustomed to large daily influxes of workers have suffered. Office vacancies are up, and small businesses have closed. The national office vacancy rate rose to a record 19.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to Moody’s Analytics , which has been tracking the statistic since 1979.

Many hospitals were overwhelmed during COVID-19 surges, with too few beds for the flood of patients. But many also demonstrated their resilience and “surge capacity,” dramatically expanding bed counts in very short periods of time and finding other ways to treat patients in swamped medical centers. Triage units and COVID-19 wards were hastily erected in temporary structures on hospital grounds.

Still, U.S. hospitals suffered severe shortages of nurses and found themselves lacking basic necessities such as N95 masks and personal protective garb for the doctors, nurses, and other workers who risked their lives against the new pathogen at the start of the outbreak. Mortuaries and first responders were overwhelmed as well. The dead were kept in refrigerated trucks outside hospitals.

The country’s fragmented public health system proved inadequate to the task of coping with the outbreak, sparking calls for major reform of the CDC and other agencies. The CDC botched its initial attempt to create tests for the virus, leaving the United States almost blind to its spread during the early stages of the pandemic.

Beyond the physical dangers, mental health became a serious issue for overburdened health care personnel, other “essential” workers who continued to labor in crucial jobs, and many millions of isolated, stressed, fearful, locked-down people in the United States and elsewhere. Parents struggled to care for children kept at home by the pandemic while also attending to their jobs.

In a June 2020 survey, the CDC found that 41 percent of respondents said they were struggling with mental health and 11 percent had seriously considered suicide recently. Essential workers, unpaid caregivers , young adults, and members of racial and ethnic minority groups were found to be at a higher risk for experiencing mental health struggles, with 31 percent of unpaid caregivers reporting that they were considering suicide. WHO reported two years later that the pandemic had caused a 25 percent increase in anxiety and depression worldwide, young people and women being at the highest risk.

The rate of homicides by firearm in the United States rose by 35 percent during the pandemic to the highest rate in more than a quarter century.

A silver lining in the chaos of the pandemic’s opening year was the development in just 11 months of highly effective vaccines for the virus, a process that normally had taken 7–10 years. The U.S. government’s bet on unproven messenger RNA technology under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed paid off, and the result validated the billions of dollars that the government pours into basic research every year.

On December 14, 2020, New York nurse Sandra Lindsay capped the tumultuous year by receiving the first shot of the vaccine that eventually would help end the public health crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• SAGE - PMC COVID-19 Collection

The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Family Well-Being: A Literature Review

Maria gayatri.

1 Directorate for Development of Service Quality of Family Planning, National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN), Jakarta, Indonesia

Mardiana Dwi Puspitasari

2 Research Center for Population, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Jakarta, Indonesia

Background: COVID-19 has changed family life, including employment status, financial security, the mental health of individual family members, children's education, family well-being, and family resilience. The aim of this study is to analyze the previous studies in relation to family well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A literature review was conducted on PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, and Scopus for studies using a cross-sectional or quasi-experimental design published from their inception to October 15, 2020, using the keywords “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” “coronavirus,” “family,” “welfare,” “well-being,” and “resilience.” A manual search on Google Scholar was used to find relevant articles based on the eligibility criteria in this study. The presented conceptual framework is based on the family stress model to link the inherent pandemic hardships and the family well-being. Results: The results show that family income loss/economic difficulties, job loss, worsening mental health, and illness were reported in some families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Family life has been influenced since the early stage of the pandemic by the implementation of physical distancing, quarantine, and staying at home to curb the spread of coronavirus. During the pandemic, it is important to maintain family well-being by staying connected with communication, managing conflict, and making quality time within family. Conclusion: The government should take action to mitigate the social, economic, and health impacts of the pandemic on families, especially those who are vulnerable to losing household income. Promoting family resilience through shared beliefs and close relationships within families is needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a form of pneumonia caused by the severe acute respiratory coronavirus syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ( Lai et al., 2020 ). The appearance of COVID-19 becomes an outbreak in December 2019 in China. The coronavirus disease can be transmitted through the respiratory tract, digestive system, and also mucosal surface ( Ye et al., 2020 ). Fever, cough, shortness of breath, and diarrhea are the symptoms of COVID-19 infection at the onset. The pandemic of COVID-19 has brought many changes to all the communities, workers, and families to reduce the spread of the coronavirus and limit its impact on health, societal, and economic consequences. This pandemic had a powerful impact on family life. Mental resilience is required for coping strategies during the pandemic ( Barzilay et al., 2020 ).

COVID-19 has changed family life, including employment, financial instability, the mental health of family members, children's education, family well-being, and family resilience. People start to protect themselves from the spread of the coronavirus by physical and social distancing, sheltering-in-place, restricting travel, and implementing health protocols. Some public places are abrupt closures, such as schools, childcare centers, community programs, religious places, and workplaces. This change impacts social life, such as isolation, psychological distress, substantial economic distress, depression, and also domestic violence, including child abuse ( Campbell, 2020 ; Patrick et al., 2020 ). The Internet has become the most important thing to support all activities while staying at home and staying connected with others.

Families are forced to maintain a work–life balance in the same place with all family members during the pandemic ( Fisher et al., 2020 ). Parents are working from home while children are in school. Therefore, parents and children should share the space for their activities at home. On the one hand, parents should focus on their job to maintain their working target in order to avoid losing their job, heighten their financial concerns, sustain their food security, maintain healthy habits, and keep their family members safe from COVID-19. Balancing life during the pandemic is challenging ( Fisher et al., 2020 ). Fathers and mothers should work together not only on the paid job but also on domestic chores, childcare, and teaching their children.

The aim of this literature review is to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family well-being based on the previously published articles.

Literature Review

The coronavirus pandemic has become a public health crisis or disaster that has had an impact on family well-being both directly and indirectly. An infectious disease outbreak has spread rapidly, severely disrupted the world, and resulted in morbidity and mortality. This pandemic produced not only a health crisis, but also a social crisis among the population ( Murthy, 2020 ).

The conceptual framework was adapted from McCubbin and Patterson's family stress model. Using McCubbin and Patterson's family stress model, stressful life events (external stressors) had an impact on family life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a profound impact on Indonesian economic growth and labor market, indicating that more people were living in poverty ( Gandasari & Dwidienawati, 2020 ; Olivia et al., 2020 ; Suryahadi et al., 2020 ). Stress-frustration theory indicates that diminished economic resources in the family could add to stress, frustration, and conflict in interpersonal interactions, which might increase the risk of men committing violence against women ( Kaukinen, 2020 ). It means that unemployment and economic instability contributed to the family stress. Furthermore, the underlying pandemic difficulties posed a threat to Indonesian people's mental health ( Abdullah, 2020 ; Megatsari et al., 2020 ). A higher risk of stress could lead to domestic violence. Domestic violence was defined as a coping mechanism for stress induced by social-systemic variables, such as poverty, unemployment, homelessness, loneliness, and ecological characteristics ( Zhang, 2020 ). Individual stress and other factors (such as job loss, lower income, limited resources and support, and hazardous and harmful alcohol use) were associated with domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Campbell, 2020 ). Indonesian children were also affected. A recent study found that the financial burden within the family constituted a risk to Indonesian child competency and adjustment ( Riany & Morawska, 2021 ). The well-being of children might be dependent on the well-being of their parents ( Dahl et al., 2014 ). As a result, the inherent pandemic hardships posed a risk to family well-being.

According to the family stress model, the family must engage in an active process to balance external stressors with personal and family resources and a positive outlook on COVID-19 in order to develop and sustain an adaptive coping strategy to face the inherent pandemic hardships and eventually reach a level of family well-being. Mental health and prevention from the risk of mental disorders were required by incorporating individuals, families, communities, and government during and after pandemic events, so that family well-being and resilience could be achieved and improved ( Murthy, 2020 ). Resilience was characterized as a process that encompassed not just successfully adapting and functioning after experiencing adversity or crisis, but also the possibility of personal and relationship transformation and positive growth as a result of adversity ( Walsh, 1996 ). There were three fundamental processes to becoming resilient: shared belief systems, organizational patterns, and communication processes within the family ( Walsh, 1996 ).

A literature review was conducted based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines ( Moher et al., 2009 ). This study was conducted from the beginning of March 2020, when the first positive case occurred in Indonesia, to October 1, 2020.

In order to meet the research objective, the authors carried out the literature review by searching various databases. The present study uses an integrative review to summarize the existing evidence to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family welfare. PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, and Scopus are selected as the main sources of the article's database. A manual search on Google Scholar is also conducted to find relevant articles based on the study’s eligibility criteria. The following keywords are used to perform the search, such as “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” “coronavirus,” “family,” “welfare,” “resilience,” and “mental health.” A total of 67 articles with the matching keywords were primarily retrieved.

Studies were eligible for inclusion if the studies are cross-sectional, experimental designs, or cohort studies describing the impact of the pandemics on family well-being both physical and mental well-being. Studies had to be published from the inception of the pandemic to October 15, 2020, in a journal with impact factors, English-language studies, and related to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some articles are excluded because they are duplicate articles or studies in non-English language. We also excluded opinions, letters to the editor, and systematic reviews or meta-analyses. Moreover, unpublished articles and reports are also excluded from this study. Finally, based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, eight articles met the inclusion criteria, and the data were extracted for the next analysis.

Based on eight articles, the data were extracted to include some important information, such as (1) Country/Region, (2) The purpose of the study, (3) Methods of the study, (4) The respondents (sample size and sample characteristics), (5) the main result of the study. The data extraction is done using a form on Microsoft Excel. All articles in this study were evaluated using narrative synthesis and presented data in the table forms.

A total of eight articles were selected for this study, with various subjects consisting of children, adolescents, adults, and parents. The literature review in this study is based on previous studies in the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Israel, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Bangladesh. Common impacts are physiological stress, anxiety, depression, income loss, fear, economic hardship, food insecurity, and family violence. Higher resilience is associated with fewer COVID-19-related worries, lower anxiety, and lower depression. Greater parental control is associated with lower stress and a lower risk of child abuse. Positive children were infected by the household contact. The results of the review are shown in Table 1 .

Table 1.

Characteristics of the Studies.

Coronavirus diseases put families in uncertain conditions without clarity on how long the pandemic situation will last. The pandemic has caused many challenges that impact on family unit and the functions of the family unit, including distraction in family relationships ( Luttik et al., 2020 ). These challenges will have an influence on family well-being in many aspects, such as loss of community, loss of income, resources, planned activities, and travel due to quarantine. The concern about nuclear family members increased because they did not want their family to become ill from the coronavirus. It is suggested to not visit the older members or those with serious illnesses who are more vulnerable to the virus.

Family life has been influenced since the early stage of the pandemic by the implementation of physical distancing, quarantine, and staying at home to curb the spread of coronavirus. Physical and social distancing are effective mitigations to reduce the spread of the coronavirus during the outbreak. However, distancing requires adaptation among family members to improve family well-being. Sheltering-in-place makes more frequent interactions among family members because they have limited opportunities to have a leisure time into the outside world. This condition, on the one hand, can create a quality time and intimate interactions among family members, but on the other hand, it may lead to long-standing high conflicts, occasionally domestic violence, and divorce ( Lebow, 2020b ). In this condition, a home can be described as a place of warmth, love, and safety or as a place of intimidation, abuse, and fear ( Hitchings & Maclean, 2020 ). Other studies found a positive outlook on the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the necessity of focusing on and enjoying family relationships, especially taking advantage of the pandemic's gift of extended time together ( Evans et al., 2020 ; Holmberg et al., 2021 ). This optimistic attitude could function as a shared belief system within the family, resulting in family resilience. Working life balance at home during the time of COVID-19 provides a new chance for internal conflicts, disagreements, and arguments in which parents try to play their multi-roles with all family members to mitigate some problems such as unemployment and financial instability ( Lebow, 2020b ). Family income loss/economic difficulties, job loss, experienced hardships during the pandemic, worsening mental and behavioral health, stress, high anxiety, distress about family contracting COVID-19, and illness are reported in some families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Domestic violence related to mental and physical health may happen during the COVID-19 quarantine. Family members lived in complex situations during the pandemic, which increased the risk of overexposure by increasing the levels of stress, anxiety, and instability. The increase in domestic violence during the pandemic is reported in many countries, such as China, Brazil, the United States, and Italy, which may represent as “tip of the iceberg” since many victims do not have the freedom to report the abuse ( Campbell, 2020 ). Domestic violence is reported as physical harm, emotional harm, and abuse. Intimate partner violence is a common form of family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Kaukinen, 2020 ; Zhang, 2020 ). There are three factors of family violence, such as the opportunities of family violence during lockdown and isolation at home, the economic crisis in the households, and insufficient social support for the victims of domestic violence ( Zhang, 2020 ). Individual resilience is a strong predictor of the willingness of people to cope with emergencies and challenges of different kinds, including the COVID-19 pandemic ( Kimhi et al., 2020 ). Individual resilience and well-being are significant factors influencing distress symptoms and a sense of danger ( Kimhi et al., 2020 ). Physical abuse, emotional abuse, and stalking are kinds of intimate partner violence that are experienced by some women during the COVID-19 quarantine ( Mazza et al., 2020 ).

Family violence is one of the causes of divorce. Family violence has become a serious social problem. During the pandemic in China, some couples decide to divorce due to family violence in their spousal relationship ( Zhang, 2020 ). Divorcing partners in the wake of COVID-19 have more complex issues because they should physically and emotionally separate in their households. It is suggested to involve family therapy so they can share their problems that arise readily to prevent anger, contempt, and other problematic conflicts ( Lebow, 2020b ). A good cooperation and communication among divorced parents may help children achieve their goals through this hard time. A recent study found that communication between two single parents discussing the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on their family life could acquire something considerably more significant than just support and self-discovery ( Abdellatif & Gatto, 2020 ).

Financial distress, economic depression, unemployment, poverty, and added stressors such as the care and homeschooling of children, social distancing, and family isolation have increased the opportunities for family violence ( Kaukinen, 2020 ; Zhang, 2020 ). Family members with lower financial income, lower education status, and lower occupational status are more likely to experience family violence, including family conflicts, economic distress, high tension, lower mental well-being, and insufficient support during physical distancing or lockdown ( Zhang, 2020 ). Families have been dealing with threats from COVID-19 pandemics, both direct and indirect effects ( Lebow, 2020a ). The direct effects are the loss of family members, anxiety feelings related to family loss, increased unemployment, limited physical and social contact, family stress, conflict, and financial vulnerability. During the pandemic, families may have a virtual connection to maintain their communication. Therefore, geographic challenges are becoming less important due to virtual interconnection. Furthermore, a recent study found that virtual communication during the COVID-19 pandemic could improve family well-being and happiness ( Gong et al., 2021 ). At this time, digital technology, which needs digital literacy, becomes essential ( Hitchings & Maclean, 2020 ).

The coronavirus pandemic has increased the risk of mental health problems (such as mood disorders, fear, anxiety, depression, alcohol and smoking abuse) as well as physical health problems (such as sleep disturbance, gastrointestinal problems, poorer health condition) ( Mazza et al., 2020 ). The mental problems are caused by work stress, financial stress, and changes in the social life. The coronavirus pandemic has increased the risk of mental disorders (such as mood disorders, anger, anxiety, depression, alcohol and smoking abuse) as well as physical disorders (such as sleep disturbance, gastrointestinal problems, poorer health condition). Children’s health and well-being are also in danger during the pandemic, because most of the children may get the transmission of the virus from their adult family members who were previously infected ( Su et al., 2020 ). Therefore, individual resilience and well-being as a part of family resilience and well-being should be maintained to cope with the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.

Homeschooling during the pandemic makes parental responsibilities extended to include being teachers, coaches, trainers, and mentors for their children's school from home and other extracurricular activities ( Lebow, 2020b ). The condition of staying at home may increase parental stressors, particularly for working parents who are responsible for their multi-task dealing with other stressful conditions as paid workers and also doing domestic tasks. Moreover, violence may increase among children during homeschooling. During this time, parents and children are similarly living with stress, fear, and many challenges because they share their activities in the same place for uncertain time. Some factors influence the home learning as a distance learning, such as poverty, the educational levels of parents, mental health, the availability of gadget, and Internet access. During the pandemic, however, parental involvement in their children's activities provided an opportunity to develop and preserve family well-being ( Evans et al., 2020 ).

During the pandemic, it should be more widely focused on helping family members generate their individual space. A good and intensive family communication is needed to deal with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some interventions are needed to improve maternal and child health and nutrition, such as strengthening the food supply chain, reducing food insecurity, building a net social security program, and a cash support program for the disadvantaged families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the literature review, it is recommended to increase public awareness to staying connected and reporting if they find any family violence. Improving the readiness and knowledge of healthcare providers and counselors is needed to provide counseling services to help families who have physical and mental health problems. Fulfilling parents with updated information and guidance is important to deal with pandemic especially how to have working life balance and quality of life between working, guiding children in their homeschooling and other activities. Providing parenting resources during COVID-19 including conflict management is needed to have positive relationship and manage parenting stress. The government should take action to mitigate the social, economic, and health impacts of the pandemic on families, especially those who are vulnerable to losing household income. During the pandemic, it is important to maintain family well-being by staying connected with communication, managing conflict, and making quality time within family. Promoting family resilience through shared beliefs and close relationships within families is needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study has some limitations. The limitation of this article is the possibility of omission of the potential article related to the family welfare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the exclusion of unpublished articles will become another limitation. The findings of this literature review were mostly conducted in higher-income countries, which limits the generalization of the findings to low- and middle-income countries. The future research is required regarding family welfare as responses to women’s empowerment during the COVID-19 pandemic with homogenous family’s samples or with a large sample size with heterogeneity of welfare's status. The future research can be conducted by mixed methods between qualitative and quantitative methods.

COVID-19 outbreak around the world has become a public health concern. The coronavirus pandemic has had a substantial impact on the family's life. Physical and mental health problems, economic instability, and family violence are social issues during the pandemic that should be dealt with. The government should take action to mitigate the social, economic, and health impacts of the pandemic on families especially those who are vulnerable to losing household income. Promoting family welfare and resilience through shared beliefs and close relationships within families is needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs: Maria Gayatri https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2792-5586

Mardiana Dwi Puspitasari https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6827-3350

• Abdellatif A., Gatto M. (2020). It’s OK not to be OK: Shared reflections from two PhD parents in a time of pandemic . Gender, Work & Organization , 27 ( 5 ), 723–733. 10.1111/gwao.12465 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Abdullah I. (2020). COVID-19: Threat and fear in Indonesia . Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy , 12 ( 5 ), 488–490. 10.1037/tra0000878 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barzilay R., Moore T. M., Greenberg D. M., Didomenico G. E., Brown L. A., White L. K., Gur R. C., Gur R. E. (2020). Resilience, COVID-19-related stress, anxiety and depression during the pandemic in a large population enriched for healthcare providers . Translational Psychiatry , 10 ( 291 ), 1–8. 10.1038/s41398-020-00982-4 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brown S. M., Doom J. R., Lechuga-pe S., Watamura S. E., Koppels T. (2020). Stress and parenting during the global COVID-19 pandemic . Child Abuse & Neglect , 110 ( Pt 2 ), 104699. 10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104699 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Campbell A. M. (2020). An increasing risk of family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: Strengthening community collaborations to save lives . Forensic Science International: Reports , 2 , 100089. 10.1016/j.fsir.2020.100089 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dahl G. B., Kostol A. R., Mogstad M. (2014). Family welfare cultures . The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 129 ( 4 ), 1711–1752. 10.1093/qje/qju019 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Evans S., Mikocka-Walus A., Klas A., Olive L., Sciberras E., Karantzas G., Westrupp E. M. (2020). From “it has stopped our lives” to “spending more time together has strengthened bonds”: The varied experiences of Australian families during COVID-19 . Frontiers in Psychology , 11 ( October ), 1–13. 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.588667 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fisher J., Languilaire J., Lawthom R., Petts R. J., Runswick-cole K., Yerkes M. A. (2020). Community, work, and family in times of COVID-19 . Community, Work & Family , 23 ( 3 ), 247–252. 10.1080/13668803.2020.1756568 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gandasari D., Dwidienawati D. (2020). Content analysis of social and economic issues in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic . Heliyon , 6 ( 11 ), e05599. 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05599 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gong W. J., Wong B. Y. M., Ho S. Y., Lai A. Y. K., Zhao S. Z., Wang M. P., Lam T. H. (2021). Family e-chat group use was associated with family wellbeing and personal happiness in Hong Kong adults amidst the COVID-19 pandemic . International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 18 ( 17 ), 9139. 10.3390/ijerph18179139 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hitchings E., Maclean M. (2020). Unprecedented times: Some thoughts on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic from a family and social welfare law perspective . Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law , 42 ( 3 ), 277–280. 10.1080/09649069.2020.1796219 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Holmberg D., Bell K. M., Cadman K. (2021). Now for the good news: Self-perceived positive effects of the first pandemic wave on romantic relationships outweigh the negative . Journal of Social and Personal Relationships , 39 ( 1 ), 34–55. 10.1177/02654075211050939 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Islam S. M. D., Bodrud-Doza M., Khan R. M., Haque A., Mamun M. A. (2020). Exploring COVID-19 stress and its factors in Bangladesh: A perception-based study . Heliyon , 6 ( June ), 1–10. 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04399 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaukinen C. (2020). When stay-at-home orders leave victims unsafe at home: Exploring the risk and consequences of intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic . American Journal of Criminal Justice , 45 ( 4 ), 668–679. 10.1007/s12103-020-09533-5 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kimhi S., Marciano H., Eshel Y., Adini B. (2020). Resilience and demographic characteristics predicting distress during the COVID-19 crisis . Social Science & Medicine , 265 ( September ), 1–6. 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113389 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lai C., Shih T., Ko W., Tang H., Hsueh P. (2020). Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19): The epidemic and the challenges . International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents , 55 , 1–9. 10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105924 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lebow J. L. (2020a). Family in the age of COVID-19 . Family Process , 50 ( 2 ), 1–4. 10.1111/famp.12543 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lebow J. L. (2020b). The challenges of COVID-19 for divorcing and post-divorce families . Family Process , 59 ( 3 ), 967–973. 10.1111/famp.12574 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Luttik M. L. A., Mahrer-Imhof R., García-Vivar C., Brødsgaard A., Dieperink K. B., Imhof L., Østergaard B., Svavarsdottir E. K., Konradsen H. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: A family affair . Journal of Family Nursing , 26 ( 2 ), 87–89. 10.1177/1074840720920883 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mazza M., Marano G., Lai C., Janiri L., Sani G. (2020). Danger in danger: Interpersonal violence during COVID-19 quarantine . Psychiatry Research , 289 , 113046. 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113046 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Megatsari H., Laksono A. D., Ibad M., Herwanto Y. T., Sarweni K. P., Geno R. A. P., Nugraheni E. (2020). The community psychosocial burden during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia . Heliyon , 6 ( 10 ), e05136. 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05136 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Moher D., Liberati A., Tetzlaff J., Altman D. G., & The PRISMA Group. (2009). Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: The PRISMA statement . PLOS Medicine , 6 ( 7 ), 1–6. 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Murthy R. S. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic and emotional health: Social psychiatry perspective . Indian Journal of Social Psychiatry , 36 ( 5 ), S24–S42. 10.4103/ijsp.ijsp [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Olivia S., Gibson J., Nasrudin R. (2020). Indonesia In the time of COVID-19 . Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies , 56 ( 2 ), 143–174. 10.1080/00074918.2020.1798581 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Patrick S. W., Henkhaus L. E., Zickafoose J. S., Lovell K., Halvorson A., Loch S., Letterie M., Davis M. M. (2020). Well-being of parents and children during the COVID-19 pandemic: A national survey . Pediatrics , 146 ( 4 ), 1–8. 10.1542/peds.2020-016824 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Riany Y. E., Morawska A. (2021). Financial and work burden, psychosocial functioning, and family interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia: Effects on child outcomes . Child Psychiatry and Human Development , 1–12. 10.1007/s10578-021-01251-1 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Su L., Ma X., Yu H., Zhang Z., Bian P., Han Y., Sun J., Liu Y., Yang C., Geng J., Zhang Z., Gai Z. (2020). The different clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease cases between children and their families in China—The character of children with COVID-19 . Emerging Microbes & Infections , 9 ( 1 ), 707–713. 10.1080/22221751.2020.1744483 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Suryahadi A., Al Izzati R., Suryadarma D. (2020). Estimating the impact of COVID-19 on poverty in Indonesia . Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies , 56 ( 2 ), 175–192. 10.1080/00074918.2020.1779390 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tanoue Y., Nomura S., Yoneoka D., Kawashima T., Eguchi A., Shi S., Harada N., Miyata H. (2020). Mental health of family, friends, and co-workers of COVID-19 patients in Japan . Psychiatry Research , 291 , 113067. 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113067 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Walsh F. (1996). The concept of family resilience: Crisis and challenge . Family Process , 35 ( 3 ), 261–281. 10.1111/j.1545-5300.1996.00261.x [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ye F., Xu S., Rong Z., Xu R., Liu X., Deng P., Liu H., Xu X. (2020). Delivery of infection from asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 in a familial cluster . International Journal of Infectious Diseases , 94 , 133–138. 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.03.042 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Yeh T., Huang H., Yeh T., Huang W., Huang H., Chang Y., Chen W. (2020). Family members’ concerns about relatives in long-term care facilities: Acceptance of visiting restriction policy amid the COVID-19 pandemic . Geriatric Gerontology International , 20 ( 10 ), 938–942. 10.1111/ggi.14022 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhang H. (2020). The influence of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on family violence in China . Journal of Family Violence , 37 ( 5 ), 733–743. 10.1007/s10896-020-00196-8 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

• Open access
• Published: 17 April 2021

Impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life, mental well-being and self-rated health in German and Swiss employees: a cross-sectional online survey

• Martin Tušl 1 ,
• Rebecca Brauchli 1 ,
• Philipp Kerksieck 1 &
• Georg Friedrich Bauer 1  

BMC Public Health volume  21 , Article number:  741 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

178k Accesses

73 Citations

10 Altmetric

Metrics details

The COVID-19 crisis has radically changed the way people live and work. While most studies have focused on prevailing negative consequences, potential positive shifts in everyday life have received less attention. Thus, we examined the actual and perceived overall impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life, and the consequences for mental well-being (MWB), and self-rated health (SRH) in German and Swiss employees.

Cross-sectional data were collected via an online questionnaire from 2118 German and Swiss employees recruited through an online panel service (18–65 years, working at least 20 h/week, various occupations). The sample provides a good representation of the working population in both countries. Using logistic regression, we analyzed how sociodemographic factors and self-reported changes in work and private life routines were associated with participants’ perceived overall impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life. Moreover, we explored how the perceived impact and self-reported changes were associated with MWB and SRH.

About 30% of employees reported that their work and private life had worsened, whereas about 10% reported improvements in work and 13% in private life. Mandatory short-time work was strongly associated with perceived negative impact on work life, while work from home, particularly if experienced for the first time, was strongly associated with a perceived positive impact on work life. Concerning private life, younger age, living alone, reduction in leisure time, and changes in quantity of caring duties were strongly associated with perceived negative impact. In contrast, living with a partner or family, short-time work, and increases in leisure time and caring duties were associated with perceived positive impact on private life. Perceived negative impact of the crisis on work and private life and mandatory short-time work were associated with lower MWB and SRH. Moreover, perceived positive impact on private life and an increase in leisure time were associated with higher MWB.

The results of this study show the differential impact of the COVID-19 crisis on people’s work and private life as well as the consequences for MWB and SRH. This may inform target groups and situation-specific interventions to ameliorate the crisis.

Peer Review reports

Key findings

31% of employees perceived a negative impact of the crisis on their work life. Mandatory short-time workers and those who lost their job felt the negative impact the most.

10% of employees perceived a positive impact of the crisis on their work life. Those working in home-office, particularly if experienced for the first time, felt the positive impact the most.

30% of employees perceived a negative impact of the crisis on their private life. Living in a single household, reduction in leisure time, and changes in quantity of caring duties (i.e., increase or decrease) were strongly associated with the negative impact.

13% of employees perceived a positive impact on their private life. Living with a partner or family, mandatory short-time work, increases in leisure time and caring duties were strongly associated with the positive impact.

Perceived negative impact of the crisis on work and private life and mandatory short-time work were strongly associated with lower mental well-being and self-rated health.

Perceived positive impact of the crisis on private life and an increase in leisure time were strongly associated with higher mental well-being and, for leisure time, also with higher self-rated health.

Targeted interventions for vulnerable groups should be established on a company/governmental levels such as psychological first aid accessible online or rapid financial aids for those who have lost their income partially or completely.

Companies may consider offering positive psychology trainings to employees to help them purposefully focus on and make use of the beneficial consequences of the crisis. Such trainings may also include workshops on optimal crafting of their work and leisure time during the pandemic.

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) [ 1 ]. In the following weeks, the virus quickly spread worldwide, forcing the governments of affected countries to implement lockdown measures to decrease transmission rates and prevent the overload of hospital emergency rooms. Switzerland entered full lockdown on March 16th, Germany followed 6 days later on March 22nd. Restrictive measures in both countries were comparable and included border controls, closing of schools, markets, restaurants, nonessential shops, bars, entertainment and leisure facilities, as well as ban on all public and private events and gatherings [ 2 , 3 ]. Such strict measures were in place until the end of April when both governments started to gradually ease the measures [ 4 , 5 ]. Consequently, much of the working population suddenly faced drastic changes to everyday life. People who commuted to work and had rich social lives outside their homes found themselves in a mandatory work from home (WFH) situation, many employees were furloughed or laid off as various businesses and industries had to shut down, and health workers in emergency rooms as well as supermarket staff and other essential employees were faced with a dramatic increase in workload and job strain [ 6 , 7 ].

Regarding the public health impact of the COVID-19 crisis, several studies suggest that working conditions have deteriorated and that employees are more likely to experience mental health problems, such as stress, depression, and anxiety [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. In particular, women, young adults, people with chronic diseases, and those who have lost their jobs as a result of the crisis seem to be the most affected [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. One of the common stressors that research has highlighted is the fear of losing one’s job and, consequently, one’s income [ 7 ]. Moreover, social isolation, conflicting messages from authorities, and an ongoing state of uncertainty have been described as some of the main factors contributing to emotional distress and negatively affecting mental health and well-being [ 8 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ].

In the European context, Eurofound [ 12 ] released a report on research in April 2020 involving 85,000 participants across 27 EU member countries. The data indicate that the EU population experienced high levels of loneliness, low levels of optimism, insecurity regarding their jobs and financial future, as well as a decrease in well-being. Germany scored slightly below the EU27 average in well-being, and there is further evidence that it decreased significantly in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, between March 2020 and May 2020 [ 19 ]. The Eurofound report does not discuss Switzerland; however, other studies suggest that there has been an increase in emotional distress in Swiss young adults [ 20 ] and that undergraduate students have experienced higher levels of stress, depression, anxiety, and loneliness compared to the time before the COVID-19 outbreak [ 14 ]. A Swiss social monitor study reports that over 40% of Swiss adults perceive a worsened quality of life compared to before the pandemic, 10% experience feelings of loneliness, 10% report fear of losing their job, and about 1% lost their job as a result of the pandemic. The report also indicates an increase in WFH by 29% compared to before the pandemic [ 21 ].

Accordingly, the data from Eurofound [ 12 ] also suggest that European employees have experienced a dramatic increase in WFH. About 37% of the EU working population transitioned to WFH as a result of the pandemic, and 24% WFH for the first time. Before the pandemic, employees had considered remote working a benefit when it followed their preferences. However, the COVID-19 lockdown changed this by forcing many employees into mandatory WFH [ 6 ]. This posed various challenges for employees without prior WFH experience, such as organizing the workspace, establishing new communication channels with colleagues, coping with work isolation, or managing boundaries between work and non-work [ 22 , 23 , 24 ]. Without proper support from the employer or insufficient resources to manage these challenges, mandatory WFH may become a burden that negatively affects employees’ well-being [ 8 ] and, in turn, their performance [ 22 ]. Furthermore, the increase in WFH has been highlighted as a potential threat to parents with small children at home, as this group is likely to experience difficulties in combining work duties with home schooling and household chores [ 12 , 23 ].

Indisputably, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a strong impact on many aspects of our lives and will continue to do so for months and years to come. However, the consequences of the crisis and societal reactions to the challenges posed by the virus are not deemed solely negative. The new situation also holds opportunities for positive shifts in our work and private lives that were impossible before the COVID-19 crisis. Many may see this crisis as an opportunity to learn how to cope with profound changes in everyday life and even to adopt new pro-active behaviors. For instance, some employees may discover that the new ways of working (e.g., WFH) facilitate more productivity and are more satisfying compared to working in an office [ 25 ]. Data collected from employees in Denmark and Germany between March and May 2020 [ 26 ] suggest that 71% of respondents felt informed and well prepared for the changing work situation and WFH. Participants also reported several advantages of working from home, such as perceived control over the workday, working more efficiently, or saving time previously spent commuting. In contrast, some reported disadvantages of WFH included social isolation, loss of the value of work, and a lack of important work equipment. Nonetheless, respondents reported overall relatively more positive experiences of WFH than negative ones. Thus, we argue that more balanced studies are needed that examine both the negative and positive impact of the COVID-19 crisis on peoples’ lives, health, and well-being, considering differential effects in diverse subgroups. Such studies have the potential to conclude how to diminish the negative and enhance the positive outcomes of the current and future pandemic-related crises in the working population.

Aim and objectives

The overall aim of the present study was to examine the actual and perceived overall impact of the COVID-19 crisis on employees’ work and private life, along with its consequences for mental well-being (MWB) and self-rated health (SRH) in the German and Swiss working populations. Specifically, we pursued the following objectives:

To investigate the perceived positive and negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life as well as to assess the self-reported changes in work and private life routines induced by the crisis.

To examine which sociodemographic variables and which self-reported changes in work and private life routines are associated with perceived positive and negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life.

To investigate how the self-reported changes and perceived overall impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life are associated with MWB and SRH as relevant health outcomes.

Although SRH has been identified as a relevant predictor of mental distress during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 10 , 27 ], to our knowledge, it has not been studied as an outcome variable in combination with MWB indicators as in our study.

The present study used a cross-sectional online survey design. We report our study following the STROBE guidelines for cross-sectional studies [ 28 ], and the checklist for reporting results of internet e-surveys (CHERRIES) [ 29 ], see ‘Additional file  1 .pdf’ in supplementary material.

Participants were recruited through a panel data service Respondi ( respondi.com ). Cross-sectional data were collected from employees in Germany and Switzerland via an online questionnaire using a web-based survey provider SurveyGizmo. The questionnaire was tested and checked by senior researchers from the field for face validity prior to the administration. The period of data collection was from 9th to 22nd April 2020, when both countries were in full lockdown as part of the control measures relating to COVID-19. Participants received a minimal incentive for completing the survey (i.e., points which could be redeemed towards a given service after participating in several surveys). Participation was voluntary and participant anonymity and confidentiality of their data were assured and emphasized. Each participant in the online panel service database had a unique code which ensured anonymity and prevented multiple submissions from one participant. Important items in the survey were mandatory and participants were informed if they accidently skipped an item. Further, the questionnaire used a logic to avoid asking redundant or non-applicable questions (e.g., participants who indicated that they lost their job were not asked about the change in working time or home-office). Moreover, we included several disqualifying items (i.e., “Please choose number three as an answer to this item”) as a quality check to exclude participants who would give random answers. Participants were able to go back in the survey and review or change their answers.

The eligibility criteria were: being employed (not self-employed), working more than 20 h per week, and being within the age range of 18 to 65 years. The final sample included 2118 participants. Figure  1 shows a flow diagram describing how the final sample was achieved.

Sample flow diagram

Sociodemographic characteristics of the sample are shown in Table  1 : the mean age was 46.51 years ( SD  = 11.28), 5% completed primary, 58% secondary, and 37% tertiary education, Footnote 1 55% were male, 77% were from Germany, and 72% were living with a partner, family, or in a shared housing.

Overall, in terms of age, education, and living situation (i.e., single households), the study sample seems to be a good representation of the target of the working population in Germany ( www.destatis.de ) and Switzerland ( www.bfs.admin.ch ). In general, males were slightly overrepresented in our sample (56%) compared to the general population (52%); however, the proportion of males in both countries did not differ significantly (56% from Germany, 52% from Switzerland), χ 2 (1) = 1.63, p  = 0.201.

Perceived overall impact of COVID-19 on work and private life

Assuming that both improvements and deteriorations can simultaneously occur due to COVID-19, we designed four separate items (see ‘Additional file  2 .pdf’ in supplementary material) to assess participants’ subjective evaluation of the overall impact of the COVID-19 crisis on their work and private lives: “The Corona-crisis has (a) worsened my work life; (b) improved my work life; (c) worsened my private life; (d) improved my private life.” The response scale ranged from 1 =  strongly disagree to 5 =  strongly agree . As a primer to this question, we defined the Corona-crisis as follows:

“The following questions deal directly with the current COVID-19 (Corona) pandemic and the consequent regulations from the government (i.e., business closures, school closures, event bans, contact reduction in public spaces, etc.). Hereafter, we refer to this collectively as the Corona-crisis. Please compare your current situation with the situation as it was before the government regulations.”

Changes in work and private life routines

The following items examined qualitative and quantitative changes in participants’ work and private life routines resulting from the COVID-19 crisis: (a) change in employment contract ( no change ; short-time work Footnote 2 with a reduced contract ; short-time work with a contract reduced to 0 h ; job loss ); (b) proportion of WFH before and after COVID-19 ( 0 to 100% ; participants were grouped into three categories according to their answers: None , Experienced , New Footnote 3 ); (c) changes in quantity of working time,; (d) changes in quantity of leisure time; and (e) changes in quantity of caring duties. The response scale for items c, d, and e ranged from 1 =  strongly decreased to 5 =  strongly increased . For the statistical analysis, responses were grouped into three categories: decreased (1 + 2), unchanged (3), increased (4 + 5).

• Mental well-being

MWB was assessed with the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) [ 30 ]. Specifically, we used the German translation of the 7-item short version of the WEMWBS [ 31 ]. WEMWBS is a measure of MWB capturing the positive aspects of mental health, namely, positive affect (feelings of optimism, relaxation), satisfying interpersonal relationships, and positive functioning (clear thinking, self-acceptance, competence, autonomy). The response scale ranged from 1 =  never to 5 =  all the time . For the statistical analysis (i.e., ordinal logistic regression model), we grouped participants into six categories according to their overall score in percentiles (10, 25, 50, 75, 90, 99%).

• Self-rated health

SRH was assessed with a single item: “In general, how would you evaluate your health?” [ 32 ]. The response scale ranged from 1 =  very bad to 5 =  very good . The application of single-item measures for self-evaluated health is a gold standard in public health research [ 33 ].

Statistical analysis

Data analysis was carried out using R version 4.0.2. In the first step, four ordinal logistic regression models using polr from the MASS R package [ 34 ] were fitted to assess associations of the perceived overall impact of COVID-19 on work and private life as outcome variables with sociodemographic factors (gender, age, country, living situation) and factors related to changes in work and private life routines (changes in employment contract, WFH, work time, leisure time, caring duties) as independent variables. To verify that there was no multicollinearity, the variables were tested a priori using the variance inflation factor tested vif from the car R package [ 35 ] (VIF < 2). The results are presented as adjusted odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) interpreted as the OR of reporting a higher level of the impact compared to the reference category.

Further, two additional ordinal logistic regression models were fitted to investigate the association between the perceived overall impact of COVID-19 on work and private life Footnote 4 and the self-reported changes in work and private life routines as independent variables and MWB with SRH as outcome variables. In both models, we also controlled for possible confounders (gender, age, country, living situation). The results are presented as adjusted OR with 95% CI interpreted as the OR of reporting a higher level of MWB/SRH compared to the reference category.

Figure  2 displays the correlations between the analyzed variables. Education was not included in the regression models due to missing data (see details in the Methods section).

Correlation matrix of the analyzed variables. Note: Only correlations with p  < 0.01 displayed; Gender (1 = Female, 2 = Male); Country (1 = Germany, 2 = Switzerland); Education (1 = Primary, 2 = Secondary, 3 = Tertiary); Living situation (1 = Alone, 2 = With partner/family); Contract change (1 = No change, 2 = Short-time reduced, 3 = Short-time 0, 4 = Job loss); Home-office (1 = None, 2 = Experienced, 3 = New)

Perceived overall impact of COVID-19 crisis and self-reported changes in work and private life routines

Figure  3 shows the results for the four items related to the perceived overall impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life. Thirty-one percent of participants (strongly) agreed that their work life had worsened and 30% (strongly) agreed that their private life had worsened. In contrast, 10% (strongly) agreed that their work life had improved and 13% (strongly) agreed that their private life had improved as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

Perceived impact on work and private life and self-reported changes in work time, leisure time, and caring duties. Note: Total percentage does not always equal 100% due to rounding error

Further, Fig.  3 shows self-reported changes with regard to the quantity of time actually spent in work and private life. Work time decreased for 38%, leisure time increased for 36%, while the amount of caring duties changed for 26% of participants.

Figures  4 and 5 show self-reported changes with regard to contracted working hours and home-office. Twenty-eight percent of participants experienced a change in their employment contract, while 27% were affected by mandatory short-time work, 1% lost their job as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Fifty-one percent reported to WFH and of those, 20% reported doing so for the first time.

Self-reported changes in home-office. Note: None = 0% WFH before COVID-19, 0% after; Experienced = at least 10% WFH before and at least 10% after COVID-19; New = 0% WFH before and at least 10% after COVID-19

Self-reported changes in contracted working hours. Note: Short-time reduced = work hours temporarily partly reduced by employer; Short time 0 = work hours temporarily reduced to 0 by employer

Factors associated with perceived impact on work life

Table  2 shows OR comparisons between different subgroups concerning their evaluation of the degree to which their work life had worsened or improved due to the COVID-19 crisis, assessed by two separate dependent variables. Regarding perceived negative impact on work life, change in employment contract demonstrated the highest OR of reporting a deterioration of work life. The association was particularly strong in participants who had their contract reduced to mandatory short-time work with 0 working hours (OR = 9.72) and in those who had lost their job (OR = 35.07). Further, participants who reported a change in their work time had a significantly higher OR of reporting a deterioration of work life (OR = 2.95; 2.06). Finally, changes in leisure time and increased caring duties were significantly associated with perceived deterioration of work life. This association was particularly strong for a decrease in leisure time (OR = 1.62) and an increase in caring duties (OR = 1.58).

Regarding perceived positive impact of COVID-19 on work life, WFH had the highest OR of reporting an improvement in work life. The association was particularly strong in those who had started to WFH for the first time (OR = 2.77). Increase in leisure time was also significantly associated with a positive impact on work life. Further, older employees in the 51–60 and 61–65 age groups had significantly lower odds of reporting a positive impact of COVID-19 on work life (OR = 0.71; 0.61), as well as short-time employees, in particular those with a contract reduced to 0 working hours (OR = 0.53), and those who reported a decrease in work time (OR = 0.61).

Factors associated with perceived impact on private life

Table 2 further shows OR comparisons within different subgroups concerning their evaluation of the degree to which their private life had worsened or improved due to the COVID-19 crisis, assessed by two separate dependent variables. Regarding perceived negative impact on private life, the subgroup of participants living with a partner, family, or in a shared housing had significantly lower odds of reporting the deterioration of their private life compared to those living alone (OR = 0.41). The odds of reporting deterioration of private life were lower also for the 61–65 age group (OR = 0.58). Finally, changes in the quantity of leisure time and quantity of caring duties were associated with perceived deterioration of private life, and this association was particularly strong for a decrease in leisure time (OR = 2.62) and a decrease in caring duties (OR = 1.62).

Regarding perceived positive impact on private life, the strongest association was with an increase in leisure time (OR = 2.25), followed by living with a partner, family, or in a shared housing (OR = 1.74); WFH, particularly among those with prior WFH experience (OR = 1.72); and with an increase in caring duties (OR = 1.33). Short-time workers had significantly higher odds of reporting a positive impact on their private life compared to workers without any change, especially those with a contract reduced to 0 working hours (OR = 1.57).

Association between the perceived impact, self-reported changes, mental well-being and self-rated health

Table  3 shows the results of the associations between perceived overall impact, the self-reported changes in work and private life routines, and relevant health outcomes in terms of MWB and SRH, controlled for various sociodemographic variables. Regarding the perceived overall impact, participants who (strongly) agreed that COVID-19 had worsened their work life reported significantly lower MWB (OR = 0.61) compared to those who (strongly) disagreed. In addition, participants who neither agreed nor disagreed that their work life had worsened reported lower MWB (OR = 0.71) compared to those who (strongly) disagreed. A strong negative association could also be seen regarding perceived negative impact on private life: participants who (strongly) agreed that their private life had worsened reported lower MWB (OR = 0.62) and SRH scores (OR = 0.67) compared to those who (strongly) disagreed. Both outcomes were also negatively associated with employees who neither agreed nor disagreed that their private life had worsened (OR = 0.80; 0.66) compared to those who (strongly) disagreed. Finally, participants who (strongly) agreed that their private life had improved as a result of the COVID-19 crisis had higher odds of reporting a higher MWB score (OR = 1.39) compared to those who (strongly) disagreed.

Regarding the impact of the self-reported changes in work and private life routines, mandatory short-time workers with a contract reduced to 0 working hours reported significantly lower MWB (OR = 0.57) and SRH (OR = 0.49) compared to participants without any change in their employment contract. In contrast, an increase in leisure time was positively associated with both better MWB (OR = 1.23) and SRH (OR = 1.45).

The present study aimed to examine the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on employees’ work and private life and the consequences for MWB and SRH in German and Swiss employees. The first objective of the study was to assess the perceived impact and self-reported changes related to COVID-19. Although the research has thus far mostly emphasized the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 36 ], our data show that more than 40% of participants perceived no negative changes and over 10% even positive shifts in both life domains. This can be partly explained by the experienced changes in daily routines: 28% of participants were affected by a change in their employment contract and 49% by changes in the quantity of work time, confirming almost identical findings for Germany in the Eurofound report [ 12 ]. Also, quantity of leisure time and of caring duties changed for 58 and 26% respectively. The finding that about half WFH at least part of their working time, and 20% for the first time is also in line with Eurofound’s data where 24% reported WFH for the first time [ 12 ]. Overall, the proportion of people affected by changes in work and private life is comparable but hardly exceeds 50%, similar to the proportion of participants who reported a deterioration in their work and private life.

The second objective was to explore the factors associated with perceived impact on work and private life. A change in contracted work hours (i.e., mandatory short-time work, job loss), and changes in work time were strongly associated with reporting deterioration of work life. Those affected by short-time work experienced a significant disruption in their work routine as well as fear of losing the job, factors associated with increased level of distress and low MWB [ 7 ]. In consequence, employees whose contract had been reduced or terminated due to the lockdown measures are particularly vulnerable to developing mental health problems [ 11 , 13 ]. Further, an increase in caring duties, and, perhaps more surprisingly, increase and decrease in leisure time were strongly associated with perceived deterioration of work life. Such changes in private life routines may require efforts for readjustments that can interfere with work and work-life balance. These readjustments may be particularly difficult for older employees (i.e., age group 61–65) who were more likely to report deterioration of their work life. They may be particularly sensitive to changes in daily structure and less flexible in adapting to a new situation, such as mandatory WFH, less personal contact with colleagues, and an increase in the use of digital technology.

WFH was most strongly associated with perceived positive impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work life, particularly in those reporting WFH for the first time, supporting evidence from Ipsen and colleagues [ 26 ]. This positive impact of WFH may be explained by a reduction or absence of commute time, more job autonomy, more flexible workdays, and ultimately, extra time for leisure. In fact, increased leisure time was another important factor associated with perceived positive impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work life. More time for leisure may allow for better recovery from work and rebuilding of personal resources [ 37 , 38 ], which can then help an individual deal with work demands. In contrast, a change in contracted working hours and a decrease in work time were negatively associated with perceived positive impact on work life. A reduction in work time may not only cause financial problems, but also reduces important daily routines and social interactions at work, and may trigger fear of losing one’s job. Again, older employees may struggle more with the new situation and may be less successful in transforming it to their benefit, explaining why the oldest age groups, 54–60 and 61–65 years, were less likely to report an improvement in their work life.

Regarding the perceived impact on private life, participants living alone were more likely to report a deterioration and less likely to report an improvement of their private life compared to those living with a partner, family, or in a shared housing. The COVID-19 lockdown substantially restricted possibilities for social interactions beyond one’s own household, particularly affecting people living alone. For individuals who live alone, this may lead to feelings of loneliness [ 12 ], which in turn, threatens their MWB [ 39 ], highlighting the importance of having opportunities for direct exchange in such a crisis situation. This could also explain that an increase in caring duties, allowing for more exchange with family members, was associated with perceived positive shifts in private life. Further, an increase in WFH showed to be beneficial also to the private life, particularly to those experienced in WFH who did not need to first establish their workspace and new routines. Increase in leisure time and, more surprisingly, mandatory short-time work were also associated with positive impact on private life, as employees can engage more freely in activities they value. Interestingly, participants over 60 years old were less likely to report a deterioration of their private life. Older employees may be less dependent on the number of social contacts beyond their household, and they may have more mature emotion regulation strategies than the younger generations [ 40 ]. Indeed, mental well-being of the German elderly population (65+) remained largely unaltered during the early COVID-19 lockdown [ 41 ].

Finally, our third objective was to investigate how the perceived overall impact and self-reported changes induced by the crisis were associated with MWB and SRH. Low SRH has been associated with increased odds of depression [ 27 ], displaying the relevance of SRH for psychologically demanding situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results suggest a strong negative association between the perceived negative impact on work and private life, MWB and SRH, indicating that this perception by itself is of relevance. It is of note that the perceived negative impact, particularly in private life, had such a strong association with SRH, which is more stable over time than MWB. In contrast, perceived positive impact on private life was associated with higher MWB. It seems that those who were able to cope with the COVID-19 crisis and translate the lockdown measures into some positive shifts in their private life, also benefited in terms of increased MWB.

Looking at the impact of the self-reported changes on MWB and SRH, mandatory short-time work with 0 contracted working hours was strongly associated with a lower MWB and SRH. Short-time work leads to significant losses of financial security and of daily structure and routines. Conversely, an increase in leisure time was positively associated with MWB, and the link was even stronger with SRH. More time for leisure gives extra opportunities for individuals to engage in meaningful activities that provide them with important resources that benefit their MWB and SRH. The overall strength of the associations indicates that MBW may be more affected by the perceived impact, as both are cognitive-emotional domains and are more dependent on the cognitive appraisal of one’s situation and emotional experience. SRH, on the other hand, may be more affected by actual changes in work and private life that increase or decrease opportunities to engage in activities that are perceived as beneficial to health.

Limitations and strengths

A major limitation is the cross-sectional design, which allowed only to infer associations between variables but did not provide evidence of the directions of the associations or potential causality. Furthermore, the online survey created timely data on the immediate impact of the COVID-19 crisis situation. However, the self-reported data may be influenced by common method biases [ 42 ], such as social desirability bias [ 43 ] or self-selection bias, posing potential threats to the validity of our findings. Thus, we hired a professional panel data service that guarantees collection of high quality data. Moreover, we implemented various strategies in the questionnaire such as using disqualifying items to prevent invalid answers. The sociodemographic characteristics of our sample indicate a good representation of the target population. Finally, we did not control for all variables that might have affected the results. For instance, coping with a crisis and MWB differ individually and may be influenced by variables such as personality traits, resilience, or coping style [ 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ]. However, our study aimed to provide a broad picture of both the negative and positive impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on a large, diverse sample of the working population. Thus, it was beyond the scope of this study to investigate individual differences and characteristics. In addition, a more complete, lengthy survey would have likely reduced the participation rate.

A strength of the present study is the relatively large and heterogeneous sample size that allowed us to conduct a detailed analysis and explore different subgroups within the sample. Another strength is the time point of the data collection launched at the beginning of April 2020, close to the first peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in Germany and Switzerland and onset of the related lockdown measures. This enabled us to capture a valid picture of the immediate impact of the lockdown measures. Moreover, the survey assessed the present situation, adding to the validity compared to a retrospective survey design. Finally, the combination of a subjective evaluation of the impact of the crisis with relevant, standardized public health indicators of MWB and SRH increases the relevance of the results to public health research and for policymaking.

Conclusion and policy recommendations

The present study contributes to our understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life. It provides evidence on the covariates of a more negative/positive perceived impact and on the associations with MWB and SRH in the German and Swiss working populations. Employees whose employment contract was affected by the crisis seem to have felt the greatest negative impact on their work life. This highlights the crucial role of (un−/under-)employment in a crisis, as employment is associated with several health-promoting factors that cannot be substituted in any other way [ 48 ]. Moreover, the private life of employees living alone has been affected most negatively due to social isolation. Thus, psychological first aid also accessible online should be established particularly for these vulnerable groups [ 49 ]. Employers need to assure that they keep close social ties with and emotionally support employees with reduced contract or working hours. Moreover, rapid financial aids are needed to those who have lost their income partially or completely.

Nevertheless, we should also foster positive consequences of the crisis. In general, it seems that an increase in WFH was positive for work life. Learning from the beneficial effects of WFH in a crisis can inform future organizational and legislative policies to support this form of working. As employees experienced with WFH had a stronger positive impact on private life than first-timers, future WFH policies should include offering training and exchange of experience between employees on how to establish positive routines compatible with their private life. This will help employees to proactively identify their preferences and craft their work environment accordingly [ 50 ]. Further, an increase in leisure time was particularly positive for private life. More leisure time allows for dedicating extra time to activities one enjoys, and this may be beneficial also for recovery and detachment from work [ 51 ] and for mental health in general [ 52 ]. Thus, employees could also be trained in optimal crafting of their leisure time to strengthen these beneficial effects [ 53 , 54 ].

Finally, we saw that besides the reported actual changes in work and private life, also the perception of the overall positive or negative impact is related to the health outcomes. This suggests to offer positive psychology trainings to employees helping them to purposefully focus on and make use of potential positive consequences of the crisis [ 55 , 56 , 57 ]. From a longitudinal research perspective, it would be interesting to further examine how the actual and perceived impact of the ongoing crisis as well as the associated health outcomes change over time and whether some of the new routines developed during the pandemic will be maintained in the long term.

To conclude, our study adds to recent evidence [ 58 ] that the Covid-19 crisis and related lockdown measures do not have solely negative impact. Rather, it affects vulnerable groups of individuals who need targeted support, while the majority of the population remain healthy or even experience positive shifts in their daily life.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The R code used for the statistical analysis is available in the GitHub repository: https://github.com/jesuismartin/covid

Education estimates are based on data from n  = 1194 participants who took part in a subsequent wave of data collection (December 2020), missing values ( n  = 924) were imputed using mice R package (for details see supplementary material). Education was not included in the regression models as the imputed data could potentially threaten the validity of our conclusions.

Short-time work is defined as “public programs that allow firms experiencing economic difficulties to temporarily reduce the hours worked while providing their employees with income support from the State for the hours not worked” (European Commission, 2020, Retrieved from: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1587138033761&uri=CELEX%3A52020PC0139 ).

None  = 0% WFH before COVID-19, 0% after; Experienced  = at least 10% WFH before and at least 10% after COVID-19; New  = 0% WFH before and at least 10% after COVID-19.

Participants were grouped into three categories according to their answers: disagree (1 + 2), neither/nor (3), agree (4 + 5).

Abbreviations

World Health Organization

Public Health Emergency of International Concern

Work from home

European Union

Confidence interval

World Health Organization. World Health Organization Director-General’s statement on IHR Emergency Committee on Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). 2020. https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-statement-on-ihr-emergency-committee-on-novel-coronavirus- (2019-ncov). Accessed 19 May 2020.

Google Scholar  

Federal Government of Switzerland. 22. March 2020: Regeln zum Corona-Virus [Rules about the Corona virus] 2020. https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/leichte-sprache/22-maerz-2020-regeln-zum-corona-virus-1733310 . Accessed 20 Feb 2021.

Federal Council of Switzerland. Federal Council declares “extraordinary situation” and introduces more stringent measures [press release]. 2020. https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-78454.html . Accessed 20 Feb 2021.

Federal Government of Switzerland. “Wir müssen ganz konzentriert weiter machen”. 2020. [“We have to stay focused”]. 2020. https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/coronavirus/bund-laender-corona-1744306 . Accessed 20 Feb 2021.

Federal Council of Switzerland. Federal Council to gradually ease measures against the new coronavirus [press release]. 2020. https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-78818.html . Accessed 20 Feb 2021.

Kniffin KM, Narayanan J, Anseel F, Antonakis J, Ashford SP, Bakker A, et al. COVID-19 and the workplace: implications, issues, and insights for future research and action. Am Psychol. 2020;76(1):1–52. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000716 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Koh D, Goh HP. Occupational health responses to COVID-19: what lessons can we learn from SARS? J Occup Health. 2020;62(1):1–6. https://doi.org/10.1002/1348-9585.12128 .

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Brooks SK, Webster RK, Smith LE, Woodland L, Wessely S, Greenberg N, et al. The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence. Lancet. 2020;395(10227):912–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30460-8 .

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Rodríguez-Rey R, Garrido-Hernansaiz H, Collado S. Psychological impact and associated factors during the initial stage of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic among the general population in Spain. Front Psychol. 2020;11:1–23. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01540 .

Wang C, Pan R, Wan X, Tan Y, Xu L, Ho CS, et al. Immediate psychological responses and associated factors during the initial stage of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic among the general population in China. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(5):1–25. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051729 .

Qiu J, Shen B, Zhao M, Wang Z, Xie B, Xu Y. A nationwide survey of psychological distress among Chinese people in the COVID-19 epidemic: implications and policy recommendations. Gen Psychiatr. 2020;33(2):1–4. https://doi.org/10.1136/gpsych-2020-100213 .

Eurofound. Living, working and COVID-19: First findings – April 2020. 2020. https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/report/2020/living-working-and-covid-19-first-findings-april-2020 . Accessed 1 June 2020.

Ozamiz-Etxebarria N, Idoiaga Mondragon N, Dosil Santamaría M, Picaza GM. Psychological symptoms during the two stages of lockdown in response to the COVID-19 outbreak: an investigation in a sample of citizens in northern Spain. Front Psychol. 2020;11:1–9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01491 .

Elmer T, Mepham K, Stadtfeld C. Students under lockdown: comparisons of students’ social networks and mental health before and during the COVID-19 crisis in Switzerland. PLoS One. 2020;15(7):1–22. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236337 .

Carvalho Aguiar Melo M, de Sousa Soares D. Impact of social distancing on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: an urgent discussion. Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2020;66:625–6. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020927047 .

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Venkatesh A, Edirappuli S. Social distancing in covid-19: what are the mental health implications? BMJ. 2020;369:1. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1379 .

Pfefferbaum B, North CS. Mental health and the Covid-19 pandemic. N Engl J Med. 2020;383(6):510–2. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2008017 .

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Benke C, Autenrieth LK, Asselmann E, Pané-Farré CA. Lockdown, quarantine measures, and social distancing: associations with depression, anxiety and distress at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic among adults from Germany. Psychiatry Res. 2020;293:1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113462 .

Zacher H, Rudolph C. Individual differences and changes in subjective wellbeing during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Am Psychol. 2020;76(1):50–62. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000702 .

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Shanahan L, Steinhoff A, Bechtiger L, Murray AL, Nivette A, Hepp U, et al. Emotional distress in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence of risk and resilience from a longitudinal cohort study. Psychol Med. 2020:1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329172000241X .

Moser A, Carlander M, Wieser S, Hämmig O, Puhan MA, Höglinger M. The COVID-19 social monitor longitudinal online panel: real-time monitoring of social and public health consequences of the COVID-19 emergency in Switzerland. PLoS One. 2020;15(11):1–12. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242129 .

Ozcelik H, Barsade SG. No employee an island: workplace loneliness and job performance. AMJ. 2018;61(6):2343–66. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2015.1066 .

Shimazu A, Nakata A, Nagata T, Arakawa Y, Kuroda S, Inamizu N, et al. Psychosocial impact of COVID-19 for general workers. J Occup Health. 2020;62(1):1–2. https://doi.org/10.1002/1348-9585.12132 .

Cho E. Examining boundaries to understand the impact of COVID-19 on vocational behaviors. J Vocat Behav. 2020;119:1–3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103437 .

Kramer A, Kramer K. The potential impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on occupational status, work from home, and occupational mobility. J Vocat Behav. 2020;119:1–4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103442 .

Ipsen C, Kirchner K, Hansen J. Experiences of working from home in times of COVID-19. International survey conducted the first months of the national lockdowns March-May, 2020. https://www.forskningsdatabasen.dk/en/catalog/2595069795 . Accessed 20 Aug 2020.

Gao J, Zheng P, Jia Y, Chen H, Mao Y, Chen S, et al. Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak. PLoS One. 2020;15(4):1–10. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231924 .

von Elm E, Altman DG, Egger M, Pocock SJ, Gøtzsche PC, Vandenbroucke JP. The strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (STROBE) statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies. Ann Intern Med. 2007;147(8):573–7. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-147-8-200710160-00010 .

Eysenbach G. Improving the quality of web surveys: the checklist for reporting results of internet E-surveys (CHERRIES). J Med Internet Res. 2004;6(3):1–6. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.6.3.e34 .

Tennant R, Hiller L, Fishwick R, Platt S, Joseph S, Weich S, et al. The Warwick-Edinburgh mental well-being scale (WEMWBS): development and UK validation. Health Qual Life Outcomes. 2007;5(1):1–13. https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-5-63 .

Lang G, Bachinger A. Validation of the German Warwick-Edinburgh mental well-being scale (WEMWBS) in a community-based sample of adults in Austria: a bi-factor modelling approach. J Public Health. 2017;25(2):135–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-016-0778-8 .

Idler EL, Benyamini Y. Self-rated health and mortality: a review of twenty-seven community studies. J Health Soc Behav. 1997;38(1):21–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/2955359 .

Bjorner JB, Fayers P, Idler E. Self-rated health. In: Fayers PM, Hays RD, editors. Assessing quality of life in clinical trials: methods and practice. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press; 2005. p. 309–23.

Venables WN, Ripley BD. Modern applied statistics with S. New York: Springer; 2002. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-21706-2 .

Book   Google Scholar  

Fox J, Weisberg S. An R companion to applied regression. Thousand Oaks: Sage; 2019.

Sibley CG, Greaves LM, Satherley N, Wilson MS, Overall NC, Lee CHJ, et al. Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown on trust, attitudes toward government, and well-being. Am Psychol. 2020;75(5):1–14. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000662 .

Hobfoll SE. Conservation of resources: a new attempt at conceptualizing stress. Am Psychol. 1989;44(3):513–24. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.3.513 .

Hobfoll SE, Halbesleben J, Neveu J-P, Westman M. Conservation of resources in the organizational context: the reality of resources and their consequences. Ann Rev Org Psychol Org Behav. 2018;5(1):103–28. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032117-104640 .

Ahmed MZ, Ahmed O, Aibao Z, Hanbin S, Siyu L, Ahmad A. Epidemic of COVID-19 in China and associated psychological problems. Asian J Psychiatr. 2020;51:1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102092 .

Carstensen LL, Fung HH, Charles ST. Socioemotional selectivity theory and the regulation of emotion in the second half of life. Motiv Emot. 2003;27(2):103–23. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024569803230 .

Röhr S, Reininghaus U, Riedel-Heller SG. Mental wellbeing in the German old age population largely unaltered during COVID-19 lockdown: results of a representative survey. BMC Geriatr. 2020;20(1):1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-020-01889-x .

Podsakoff PM, MacKenzie SB, Lee J-Y, Podsakoff NP. Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. J Appl Psychol. 2003;88(5):879–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879 .

Larsen MV, Petersen MB, Nyrup J. Do Survey Estimates of the Public’s Compliance with COVID-19 Regulations Suffer from Social Desirability Bias? J Behav Public Admin. 2020;3:1–14. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/cy4hk .

Emmons RA, Diener E. Personality correlates of subjective well-being. Personal Soc Psychol Bull. 1985;11(1):89–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167285111008 .

McCauley M, Minsky S, Viswanath K. The H1N1 pandemic: media frames, stigmatization and coping. BMC Public Health. 2013;13(1):1–16. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-1116 .

Anglim J, Horwood S, Smillie LD, Marrero RJ, Wood JK. Predicting psychological and subjective well-being from personality: a meta-analysis. Psychol Bull. 2020;146(4):279–323. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000226 .

Tonkin K, Malinen S, Näswall K, Kuntz JC. Building employee resilience through wellbeing in organizations. Hum Resour Dev Q. 2018;29(2):107–24. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21306 .

Jahoda M. Employment and unemployment: a social-psychological analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1982.

Zürcher SJ, Kerksieck P, Adamus C, Burr CM, Lehmann AI, Huber FK, et al. Prevalence of mental health problems during virus epidemics in the general public, health care workers and survivors: a rapid review of the evidence. Front Public Health. 2020;8:1–15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.560389 .

Demerouti E. Design your own job through job crafting. Eur Psychol. 2014;19(4):237–47. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000188 .

Wendsche J, Lohmann-Haislah A. A meta-analysis on antecedents and outcomes of detachment from work. Front Psychol. 2016;7:1–24. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02072 .

Demerouti E, Mostert K, Bakker A. Burnout and work engagement: a thorough investigation of the independency of both constructs. J Occup Health Psychol. 2010;15(3):209–22. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019408 .

Kosenkranius M, Rink FA, de Bloom J, van den Heuvel M. The design and development of a hybrid off-job crafting intervention to enhance needs satisfaction, well-being and performance: a study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. BMC Public Health. 2020;20(1):1–11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-8224-9 .

De Bloom J, Vaziri H, Tay L, Kujanpää M. An identity-based integrative needs model of crafting: crafting within and across life domains. J Appl Psychol. 2020;105(12):1423–46. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000495 .

Bakker A, van Woerkom M. Strengths use in organizations: a positive approach of occupational health. Can Psychol. 2018;59(1):38–46. https://doi.org/10.1037/cap0000120 .

Peláez MJ, Coo C, Salanova M. Facilitating work engagement and performance through strengths-based micro-coaching: a controlled trial study. J Happiness Stud. 2020;21(4):1265–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-019-00127-5 .

Waters L, Algoe SB, Dutton J, Emmons R, Fredrickson BL, Heaphy E, et al. Positive psychology in a pandemic: buffering, bolstering, and building mental health. J Posit Psychol. 2021:1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2021.1871945 .

Ahrens KF, Neumann RJ, Kollmann B, Plichta MM, Lieb K, Tüscher O, et al. Differential impact of COVID-related lockdown on mental health in Germany. World Psychiatry. 2021;20(1):140–1. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20830 .

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank to Roald Pijpker from Wageningen University for his helpful comments during the final editing of the manuscript.

MT received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 801076, through the SSPH+ Global PhD Fellowship Programme in Public Health Sciences (GlobalP3HS) of the Swiss School of Public Health. RB, PK, and GB received funding from the University of Zurich Foundation. Beyond providing the funding, these funding bodies were not involved at any stage of the study.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Public & Organizational Health, Center of Salutogenesis, Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Hirschengraben 84, 8001, Zurich, Switzerland

Martin Tušl, Rebecca Brauchli, Philipp Kerksieck & Georg Friedrich Bauer

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

MT planned and carried out data collection and analysis, interpretation of the results, writing and reviewing the manuscript in collaboration with the co-authors. RB contributed to the research concept, data collection, data analysis, and review of the manuscript. PK was involved with the conceptualization of the research, interpretation of the results, writing, and review of the manuscript. GB contributed to the conceptualization of the research, interpretation of results, writing, and review of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript before submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Martin Tušl .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Informed consent was obtained from all participants, the study included adult participants (18+ years) only. Participants voluntarily completed the questionnaires, guaranteeing their anonymity. For anonymous surveys on working/living conditions and self-reported mental well-being and health no ethical review was necessary under national, university, or departmental rules (Department of Data Protection at the University of Zurich, www.dsd.uzh.ch/en/ ). The study was conducted under strict observation of ethical and professional guidelines. The study was not registered prior to the start of the data collection as this is not common in the field of occupational health psychology where this study originated. The study is part of a larger longitudinal data collection on occupational health and individual strategies employee use to craft their work, started already before the Covid-19 pandemic. When the pandemic started, we decided to add the study aim to explore the immediate impact of the Covid-19 crisis on Swiss and German working population presented in this paper. The manuscript is an accurate and transparent account of the study, and no important aspects of the study or any analyses conducted have been omitted.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Additional file 1., additional file 2., rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Tušl, M., Brauchli, R., Kerksieck, P. et al. Impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and private life, mental well-being and self-rated health in German and Swiss employees: a cross-sectional online survey. BMC Public Health 21 , 741 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10788-8

Download citation

Received : 06 January 2021

Accepted : 30 March 2021

Published : 17 April 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10788-8

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Online survey
• Logistic regression
• Private life
• Switzerland

BMC Public Health

ISSN: 1471-2458

• General enquiries: [email protected]

A Smithsonian magazine special report

The Positive and Negative Impacts of Covid on Nature

The absence of humans in some places led animals to increase, while the cancellation of conservation work in other places harmed species

Brian Owens, Hakai

As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold last spring and people around the world went into lockdown, a certain type of news story started to spring up—the idea that, in the absence of people, nature was returning to a healthier, more pristine state. There were viral reports of dolphins in the canals of Venice, Italy, and pumas in the streets in Santiago, Chile. But new research shows that the true effect of suddenly removing people from so many environments has turned out to be much more complex.

“It was surprising how variable the responses were,” says Amanda Bates, an ecologist at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador who led an international team of more than 350 researchers in an effort to study how lockdowns have affected the natural world. “It’s impossible to say,” says Bates, whether the consequence of people’s sudden disappearance “was positive or negative.”

The team collected and analyzed data from hundreds of scientific monitoring programs, as well as media reports, from 67 countries. As many would expect, they did find evidence of nature benefiting from the sudden drop in air, land, and water travel.

Wildlife also benefited from reduced air and noise pollution as industry, natural resource extraction, and manufacturing declined. There was less litter found on beaches and in parks, and beach closures in some areas left the shoreline to wildlife. In Florida, for example, beach closures led to a 39 percent increase in nesting success for loggerhead turtles. Ocean fishing fell by 12 percent, and fewer animals were killed by vehicles strikes on roads and in the water. Ocean noise, which is known to disrupt a variety of marine animals, dropped dramatically in many places, including in the busy Nanaimo Harbour in British Columbia where it fell by 86 percent.

But there were also many downsides to the lack of humans. Lockdowns disrupted conservation enforcement and research efforts, and in many places illegal hunting and fishing increased as poor, desperate people looked for ways to compensate for lost income or food. The ecotourism activities that provide financial support for many conservation efforts dried up, and many restoration projects had to be cancelled or postponed. Parks that were open to visitors were inundated by abnormally large crowds. And in many places, hikers expanded trails, destroyed habitats, and even trampled endangered plants.

The researchers estimate that delays to invasive species control programs caused by lockdowns will have a huge impact. Failure to remove invasive mice from remote seabird nesting islands could lead to the loss of more than two million chicks this year alone.

The scale of these negative impacts was unexpected, says Bates. “I thought we were going to see more positive impacts,” she says, adding that it highlights just how much some ecosystems depend on human support to keep them viable. “I don’t think some of these systems would be persisting without our intervention.”

And some of the changes led to complex cascades, where it was difficult to disentangle the positive from the negative. Snow geese, for example, are usually hunted to stop them feeding on crops during their northward migration across the United States and Canada. But this year, they faced less hunting pressure, and so arrived in the high Arctic larger and healthier than usual, according to hunters in Nunavut. It might be good for the geese, but they also graze fragile Arctic tundra and degrade the habitat for other species, so more geese will have knock-on effects on the rest of the ecosystem that could persist for years.

As the world slowly gets back to normal, the data collected during this time of disruption will be useful in developing more effective forms of conservation that take into account all the ways that humans influence their surroundings, says Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist for the World Wildlife Fund. “The cool thing will be to watch how these responses change over time as human mobility gets back to normal, and to use the information to better design conservation actions to increase biodiversity both near and far, away from human populations,” she says.

Alison Woodley, senior strategic advisor at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, agrees. She says the positive impacts that were seen are likely to be temporary shifts, and so finding ways to develop more resilient conservation systems will be vital. “The common thread is the need for long-term, stable, and adequate funding to make sure that conservation is resilient and that the positive aspects of conservation are overcoming the negative,” she says.

That will benefit not just nature, but humans as well, says Woodley. There is a growing realization that protecting nature offers our best defense against future pandemics, by reducing the contact and conflict between humans and animals that can lead to viruses jumping from one species to another.

“Preventing future pandemics and restoring our life support system requires decisions and management by people to protect large areas of land and ocean, and to sustainably manage the rest of the landscape. And to do it in an integrated way,” says Woodley.

This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com .

Related stories from Hakai Magazine:

• ​ How Aquaculture Is Spreading a Salmon Virus
• Greenland Votes to Move Whaling Away From Tourists' Eyes

Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

How is COVID-19 affecting student learning?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, initial findings from fall 2020, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld senior research scientist - nwea jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea beth tarasawa , bt beth tarasawa executive vice president of research - nwea angela johnson , aj angela johnson research scientist - nwea erik ruzek , and er erik ruzek research assistant professor, curry school of education - university of virginia karyn lewis karyn lewis director, center for school and student progress - nwea.

December 3, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced uncertainty into major aspects of national and global society, including for schools. For example, there is uncertainty about how school closures last spring impacted student achievement, as well as how the rapid conversion of most instruction to an online platform this academic year will continue to affect achievement. Without data on how the virus impacts student learning, making informed decisions about whether and when to return to in-person instruction remains difficult. Even now, education leaders must grapple with seemingly impossible choices that balance health risks associated with in-person learning against the educational needs of children, which may be better served when kids are in their physical schools.

Amidst all this uncertainty, there is growing consensus that school closures in spring 2020 likely had negative effects on student learning. For example, in an earlier post for this blog , we presented our research forecasting the possible impact of school closures on achievement. Based on historical learning trends and prior research on how out-of-school-time affects learning, we estimated that students would potentially begin fall 2020 with roughly 70% of the learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year. In mathematics, students were predicted to show even smaller learning gains from the previous year, returning with less than 50% of typical gains. While these and other similar forecasts presented a grim portrait of the challenges facing students and educators this fall, they were nonetheless projections. The question remained: What would learning trends in actual data from the 2020-21 school year really look like?

With fall 2020 data now in hand , we can move beyond forecasting and begin to describe what did happen. While the closures last spring left most schools without assessment data from that time, thousands of schools began testing this fall, making it possible to compare learning gains in a typical, pre-COVID-19 year to those same gains during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from nearly 4.4 million students in grades 3-8 who took MAP ® Growth™ reading and math assessments in fall 2020, we examined two primary research questions:

• How did students perform in fall 2020 relative to a typical school year (specifically, fall 2019)?
• Have students made learning gains since schools physically closed in March 2020?

To answer these questions, we compared students’ academic achievement and growth during the COVID-19 pandemic to the achievement and growth patterns observed in 2019. We report student achievement as a percentile rank, which is a normative measure of a student’s achievement in a given grade/subject relative to the MAP Growth national norms (reflecting pre-COVID-19 achievement levels).

To make sure the students who took the tests before and after COVID-19 school closures were demographically similar, all analyses were limited to a sample of 8,000 schools that tested students in both fall 2019 and fall 2020. Compared to all public schools in the nation, schools in the sample had slightly larger total enrollment, a lower percentage of low-income students, and a higher percentage of white students. Since our sample includes both in-person and remote testers in fall 2020, we conducted an initial comparability study of remote and in-person testing in fall 2020. We found consistent psychometric characteristics and trends in test scores for remote and in-person tests for students in grades 3-8, but caution that remote testing conditions may be qualitatively different for K-2 students. For more details on the sample and methodology, please see the technical report accompanying this study.

In some cases, our results tell a more optimistic story than what we feared. In others, the results are as deeply concerning as we expected based on our projections.

Question 1: How did students perform in fall 2020 relative to a typical school year?

When comparing students’ median percentile rank for fall 2020 to those for fall 2019, there is good news to share: Students in grades 3-8 performed similarly in reading to same-grade students in fall 2019. While the reason for the stability of these achievement results cannot be easily pinned down, possible explanations are that students read more on their own, and parents are better equipped to support learning in reading compared to other subjects that require more formal instruction.

The news in math, however, is more worrying. The figure below shows the median percentile rank in math by grade level in fall 2019 and fall 2020. As the figure indicates, the math achievement of students in 2020 was about 5 to 10 percentile points lower compared to same-grade students the prior year.

Figure 1: MAP Growth Percentiles in Math by Grade Level in Fall 2019 and Fall 2020

Source: Author calculations with MAP Growth data. Notes: Each bar represents the median percentile rank in a given grade/term.

Question 2: Have students made learning gains since schools physically closed, and how do these gains compare to gains in a more typical year?

To answer this question, we examined learning gains/losses between winter 2020 (January through early March) and fall 2020 relative to those same gains in a pre-COVID-19 period (between winter 2019 and fall 2019). We did not examine spring-to-fall changes because so few students tested in spring 2020 (after the pandemic began). In almost all grades, the majority of students made some learning gains in both reading and math since the COVID-19 pandemic started, though gains were smaller in math in 2020 relative to the gains students in the same grades made in the winter 2019-fall 2019 period.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of change in reading scores by grade for the winter 2020 to fall 2020 period (light blue) as compared to same-grade students in the pre-pandemic span of winter 2019 to fall 2019 (dark blue). The 2019 and 2020 distributions largely overlapped, suggesting similar amounts of within-student change from one grade to the next.

Figure 2: Distribution of Within-student Change from Winter 2019-Fall 2019 vs Winter 2020-Fall 2020 in Reading

Source: Author calculations with MAP Growth data. Notes: The dashed line represents zero growth (e.g., winter and fall test scores were equivalent). A positive value indicates that a student scored higher in the fall than their prior winter score; a negative value indicates a student scored lower in the fall than their prior winter score.

Meanwhile, Figure 3 shows the distribution of change for students in different grade levels for the winter 2020 to fall 2020 period in math. In contrast to reading, these results show a downward shift: A smaller proportion of students demonstrated positive math growth in the 2020 period than in the 2019 period for all grades. For example, 79% of students switching from 3 rd to 4 th grade made academic gains between winter 2019 and fall 2019, relative to 57% of students in the same grade range in 2020.

Figure 3: Distribution of Within-student Change from Winter 2019-Fall 2019 vs. Winter 2020-Fall 2020 in Math

It was widely speculated that the COVID-19 pandemic would lead to very unequal opportunities for learning depending on whether students had access to technology and parental support during the school closures, which would result in greater heterogeneity in terms of learning gains/losses in 2020. Notably, however, we do not see evidence that within-student change is more spread out this year relative to the pre-pandemic 2019 distribution.

The long-term effects of COVID-19 are still unknown

In some ways, our findings show an optimistic picture: In reading, on average, the achievement percentiles of students in fall 2020 were similar to those of same-grade students in fall 2019, and in almost all grades, most students made some learning gains since the COVID-19 pandemic started. In math, however, the results tell a less rosy story: Student achievement was lower than the pre-COVID-19 performance by same-grade students in fall 2019, and students showed lower growth in math across grades 3 to 8 relative to peers in the previous, more typical year. Schools will need clear local data to understand if these national trends are reflective of their students. Additional resources and supports should be deployed in math specifically to get students back on track.

In this study, we limited our analyses to a consistent set of schools between fall 2019 and fall 2020. However, approximately one in four students who tested within these schools in fall 2019 are no longer in our sample in fall 2020. This is a sizeable increase from the 15% attrition from fall 2018 to fall 2019. One possible explanation is that some students lacked reliable technology. A second is that they disengaged from school due to economic, health, or other factors. More coordinated efforts are required to establish communication with students who are not attending school or disengaging from instruction to get them back on track, especially our most vulnerable students.

Finally, we are only scratching the surface in quantifying the short-term and long-term academic and non-academic impacts of COVID-19. While more students are back in schools now and educators have more experience with remote instruction than when the pandemic forced schools to close in spring 2020, the collective shock we are experiencing is ongoing. We will continue to examine students’ academic progress throughout the 2020-21 school year to understand how recovery and growth unfold amid an ongoing pandemic.

Thankfully, we know much more about the impact the pandemic has had on student learning than we did even a few months ago. However, that knowledge makes clear that there is work to be done to help many students get back on track in math, and that the long-term ramifications of COVID-19 for student learning—especially among underserved communities—remain unknown.

Related Content

Jim Soland, Megan Kuhfeld, Beth Tarasawa, Angela Johnson, Erik Ruzek, Jing Liu

May 27, 2020

Amie Rapaport, Anna Saavedra, Dan Silver, Morgan Polikoff

November 18, 2020

Education Access & Equity K-12 Education

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Phillip Levine

September 3, 2024

Lydia Wilbard

August 29, 2024

Zachary Billot, Annie Vong, Nicole Dias Del Valle, Emily Markovich Morris

August 26, 2024