Abstract
Following the immense impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health and everyday lives world-wide, people's fear of COVID-19 has been studied in a number of settings using the Fear of COVID scale. In Sweden, virus-preventing strategies have differed from comparable countries, with low use of formal lock-down procedures. It is crucial to study correlates of non-compliance with COVID-19 recommendations, and unwillingness to become vaccinated. This study aims to study whether fear of COVID is associated with mental distress and attitudes towards the pandemic, and to study correlates of non-compliance with key anti-COVID recommendations and with reluctancy to vaccination. This anonymous online survey study in web panel participants (N = 1,501) aimed to study a range of behavioral changes during COVID-19. Recommendations and vaccinations reluctancy were analyzed in logistic regressions against socio-demographic data, COVID-19 status, and mental health history. Internal consistency of the Fear of COVID scale was calculated. The Fear of COVID scale had a satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach-alpha 0.84), and was significantly associated with compliance with all COVID-19 recommendations and with mental health. Non-compliance with recommendations was associated with low fear of disease and younger age, among other variables. Being against vaccination was associated, among other variables, with low fear of disease and with low education. In conclusion, the Fear of COVID scale appears to be associated with key attitudes towards the COVID-19 disease. Anti-virus strategies may need to promote compliance with recommendations in subgroups who feel low fear of disease or who believe not to be in a risk group for severe disease.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the global spread of the SARSCoV-2 virus, has caused a vast disease burden, mortality and health consequences, including physical and mental disease, as well as extensive social problems (Holmes et al, 2020; Mansfield et al, 2021).Like in many other countries in Europe and world-wide, the COVID19 pandemic reached Sweden in the first months of 2020, with a first confirmed Swedish case reported on January 31, 2020
After a substantial first wave of COVID-19 transmission during the spring months of 2020, the summer months in Sweden were characterized by a substantial decrease in virus transmission, whereas a second wave started during the autumn of 2020
After a gradual increase of cases in the early autumn, a clear ‘second wave’ increase led to more extensive recommendation in an increasing number of regions, starting in mid-October, and the second wave, measured as virus cases or deaths, peaked in December, 2020
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the global spread of the SARSCoV-2 virus, has caused a vast disease burden, mortality and health consequences, including physical and mental disease, as well as extensive social problems (Holmes et al, 2020; Mansfield et al, 2021).Like in many other countries in Europe and world-wide, the COVID19 pandemic reached Sweden in the first months of 2020, with a first confirmed Swedish case reported on January 31, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the global spread of the SARSCoV-2 virus, has caused a vast disease burden, mortality and health consequences, including physical and mental disease, as well as extensive social problems (Holmes et al, 2020; Mansfield et al, 2021). After only a partial decrease in virus transmission during the winter of 2020–2021, the first months of 2021 saw a third wave of virus transmission and again increased hospital-requiring disease burden in Sweden (Swedish Public Health Agency, 2021, https://fohm.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/ind ex.html#/68d4537bf2714e63b646c37f152f1392). Strategies from governments and authorities to decrease the spread of COVID-19 have included regulations or recommendation such as stay-at-home order, hand washing, travel bans, social distancing, and the wearing of face masks (Georgieva et al, 2021). Individual protective behavior has been shown to be predicted by fear of the disease (Jo€rgensen et al, 2021; Harper et al, 2020), lower susceptibility to
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