Anxiety, worry and perceived stress in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, March 2020. Preliminary results.

Rosario Sinta Gamonal Limcaoco; Enrique Montero Mateos; Juan Matias Fernandez; Carlos Roncero

The reports from China, Italy and Spain at present address a high rate of infections in the health professionals. They are the ones who attend to all cases and are high risk group due to the continuous exposure to patients with COVID-19. Although, these findings reflect that the heath personnel get the same stress levels/ PSS-10 score, than the general population, just as described by , describes that health professionals at the moment of the outbreak, do not present higher levels of perceived stress. However they maintain high stress levels for a longer time turning it into chronic stress. A possible explanation to this, is that this professionals are more accustomed to managing higher stress levels because of the nature of their jobs. They are used to encountering critical health situations. Furthermore, the survey was carried out at the beginning of the infectious outbreak in many countries, the distress in this personnel was just beginning Avoiding crowded places due to COVID the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.