COVID-19-Social Science Research During a Pandemic. Frontiers in Public Health

A huge number of epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies have been published to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic crises and the findings from these studies are helping policy makers to understand how best to manage the current and future clinical and public health responses. In addition to impacting on infection and mortality rates due to COVID-19, government responses to reducing viral spread and “flattening the curve” have meant huge impacts on social and economic life across the globe. But research is also needed to explore the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 to assist policy makers to understand the impact of current interventions and plan future policy to mitigate unintended consequences of pandemic responses. In particular, the impacts of responses which brought social disruptions such as: closing down parts of the economy and increasing unemployment, forcing some people into “social isolation”, restricting freedom of movement, closing schools/universities/workplaces, reducing democratic decision making of governments and generally disrupting the ‘social order' of the pre-COVID-19 world are less investigated. As part of this investigation, by the 12th of May 2020, a special topic entitled “COVID-19–Social Science Research during a Pandemic” was initiated by a dedicated team of scholars as guest editors to facilitate the timely peer-review and publication of relevant manuscripts from multiple studies (1). A total of 111 manuscripts were submitted between 12 May 2020 and 1 January 2021 of which 37 manuscripts were rejected while 74 manuscripts from 298 contributing authors from all over the globe including China, Italy, US, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia were published. Population in the studies included students, health workers, men who have sex with men (MSM), and general population.