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. 2024 Jul 14:45:102827.
doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2024.102827. eCollection 2024 Sep.

No more government-imposed societal-level COVID-19 control measures but still significant self-experienced burden for severely immunocompromised individuals - A cross-sectional survey in the Netherlands

Jan Pander  1 , Wendy Beekman-Hendriks  1 , Neeltje Coolen  1 , Valerie van de Flier  2 , Jeroen Senster  3 , Chantal P Rovers  4
Affiliations

No more government-imposed societal-level COVID-19 control measures but still significant self-experienced burden for severely immunocompromised individuals - A cross-sectional survey in the Netherlands

Jan Pander et al. Prev Med Rep. .

Abstract

Objectives: In March 2023, all societal-level COVID-19 control measures were lifted by the Dutch government. This study was performed to understand the self-experienced burden of this new phase of COVID-19 on the perspectives and behaviors of severely immunocompromised individuals.

Methods: This is an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study in The Netherlands. An online survey was completed by severely immunocompromised individuals, to capture their general well-being (score from 1 = worst to 10 = best), mental and physical health, and daily and social activities during survey conduct and retrospectively for before onset of COVID-19. The survey was open for completion from May 24th until August 7nd, 2023.

Results: Of the 236 respondents, 96.6 % had been vaccinated against COVID-19 and 24.6 % were shielding to avoid COVID-19 during survey conduct. The general well-being score for all respondents was 7.5 (±1.2 SD) before onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and 6.9 (±1.6 SD) during survey conduct (P<0.001). For the shielding group (n = 58), these scores were 7.6 (±1.0 SD) and 5.7 (±1.6 SD), respectively (P<0.001). Generally, for all questions about mental and physical health and daily and social activities, there was a trend towards more negative answers during survey conduct, compared with before onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was more pronounced for the shielding group.

Conclusions: Despite absence of government-imposed societal measures, COVID-19 avoidance still had a self-experienced burden on perspectives and behaviors of immunocompromised individuals in The Netherlands, with a significantly lower general well-being during survey conduct, compared with before onset of COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; Daily activities; General well-being; Government-imposed societal measures; Immunocompromised; Mental health; Physical health; Self-isolation; Shielding; Social activities.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Responses to questions about mental and physical health and daily and social activities, before onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., at the end of 2019) versus during the survey collection period (May 24, 2023 – August 7, 2023) in The Netherlands, for A: the entire study population of all severely immunocompromised individuals (n = 236) and B: the shielding group (n = 58).
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