![]() ![]() Phobia makes people avoid the triggers of fear when such avoidance is not possible, it causes anxiety and distress ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013).Ī search in the Scopus database using the keywords "COVID-19" and "Coronavirus" with "fear", "anxiety/anxious", "uncertainty", "worry/worries/worried", "phobia", "public place" and "public transport" resulted in 499 studies after excluding studies with no abstract or in a language other than English. This paper attempts to postulate the contents and antecedents of coronaphobia, identify the associated risk factors and the underlying mechanisms of its development which might inform policy decisions and healthcare activities.Ī phobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity or situation. Therefore, fear may extend beyond falling ill or dying due to contracting the virus and evoke other fears such as that of economic adversity ( Yoon, 2020) and infecting others. COVID-19 affects all spheres of life and the risk factors are more unique, numerous, and diverse than in other pandemics. Now that there is unanimity that COVID-19 is an endemic ( BBC, 2020b Kissler et al., 2020) and living with the coronavirus with constant precautions becomes the new normal, fear may become more pronounced ( Tanner, 2020). Researchers have used the expressions “fear of COVID-19” ( Ahorsu et al., 2020 Mertens et al., 2020) and ‘ coronaphobia’ ( Asmundson and Taylor, 2020) to indicate the fear of contracting COVID-19. COVID-19 related fear, mortality rates, unemployment, protective strategies have become the most searched topics in Google search history ( Charlton, 2020 Sullivan, 2020). ![]() In the COVID-19 pandemic, as in other pandemics, fear, anxiety, and worries have been the major psychological consequences ( Roy et al., 2020 Tandon, 2020a Xiang et al., 2020). ![]() The conceptualization of coronaphobia and the model will aid future research in developing psychometric measure of coronaphobia for use in clinical and research settings and design of policies and interventions for mitigating risk factors. These factors are assumed to cause interference with routine life, catastrophizing interpretation of benign symptoms, and social amplification of risk which lead to coronaphobia. From review of relevant research, the factors identified are, an unforeseen reality, unending uncertainties, need of acquiring new practices and avoidance behavior, loss of faith in health infrastructure, contraction of COVID-19 by head of states, cautionary statements from international bodies, and infodemia. We present a conceptual model delineating the risk factors causing coronaphobia and the underlying mechanisms, for a better understanding of its developmental process. We attempt to understand the psychosocial process of the development of coronaphobia and postulate what constitutes coronaphobia, a new emerging phobia specific to COVID-19. Therefore, fear related to COVID-19 might manifest in not only fear and anxiety related to disease contraction and dying, but also associated sociooccupational stress. Though fear is a common psychological outcome during pandemics, the COVID-19 pandemic is a continuously evolving disease outbreak and has unique risk factors. COVID-19 research and media reports have revealed a rise in fears related to contracting the virus. ![]() COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to being a global health emergency, has multiple socioeconomic and psychological ramifications. ![]()
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