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World J Methodol. Sep 20, 2022; 12(5): 350-364
Published online Sep 20, 2022. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v12.i5.350
Syndemic aspects between COVID-19 pandemic and social inequalities
Jonathan Santos Apolonio, Ronaldo Teixeira da Silva Júnior, Beatriz Rocha Cuzzuol, Glauber Rocha Lima Araújo, Hanna Santos Marques, Isadora de Souza Barcelos, Luana Kauany de Sá Santos, Luciano Hasimoto Malheiro, Vinícius Lima de Souza Gonçalves, Fabrício Freire de Melo
Jonathan Santos Apolonio, Ronaldo Teixeira da Silva Júnior, Beatriz Rocha Cuzzuol, Glauber Rocha Lima Araújo, Isadora de Souza Barcelos, Luana Kauany de Sá Santos, Luciano Hasimoto Malheiro, Fabrício Freire de Melo, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Vitória da Conquista 45029-094, Bahia, Brazil
Hanna Santos Marques, Vinícius Lima de Souza Gonçalves, Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia, Campus Vitória da Conquista, Vitória da Conquista 45083-900, Bahia, Brazil
Author contributions: All authors equally contributed to this paper with the conception and design of the study, literature review and analysis, drafting, critical revision, and editing of the manuscript, and final approval of the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict of interest associated with any of the authors or coauthors who contributed their efforts to this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Fabrício Freire de Melo, MSc, PhD, Postdoc, Professor, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Rua Hormindo Barros, 58, Quadra 17, Lote 58, Vitória da Conquista 45029-094, Bahia, Brazil. freiremelo@yahoo.com.br
Received: March 20, 2022
Peer-review started: March 20, 2022
First decision: June 8, 2022
Revised: June 22, 2022
Accepted: July 25, 2022
Article in press: July 25, 2022
Published online: September 20, 2022
Processing time: 179 Days and 18 Hours
Abstract

Although the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has reached all over the world population, it has demonstrated a heterogeneous impact on different populations. The most vulnerable communities which coexist daily with the social inequalities like low access to hygiene and personal protection products, crowded residences, and higher levels of chronic diseases have a higher risk of contact and the spread of infection, beyond unfavorable clinical outcomes. The elevation of the risk of infection exposure can be related to gender due to the presence of a larger contingent of women in essential services, as well as frontline and cleaning professionals who regardless of gender have the greatest exposure to the virus. Such exposures can contribute to the development of fear of contaminating themselves or their family members associated also with the work stress, both of which are related to the emergence of mental disturbances in these populations. Furthermore, conditions of unsanitary living and low socioeconomic status, populations at war, pre-existing social barriers, and ethnicity have contributed to more impact of the pandemic both in the exposure to the virus and access to health services, COVID-19 management, and management of other pathologies. At the same time, factors such as the closing of non-essential services, the loss of jobs, and the increase in household spending aggravated the social vulnerabilities and impacted the family economy. Lastly, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed still more to the impact on women's health since it propitiated a favorable environment for increasing domestic violence rates, through the segregation of women from social life, and increasing the time of the victims with their aggressors.

Keywords: COVID-19; Minority groups; Pandemic; Social inequalities; Socioeconomic factors

Core Tip: The social inequalities interact continuously with the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, influencing the development and heterogeneity of the disease while they are potentiated by the pandemic context. Therefore, understanding the individual features of each group is of fundamental importance to the compression of the illness risk, morbidity, and mortality of the infection, data that can be used to create specific measures for health prevention and recovery of the population.