Objective: To assess factors associated with COVID-19 stigmatizing attitudes in the community and stigma experiences of COVID-19 recovered individuals during first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in India.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 18 districts located in 7 States in India during September 2020 to January 2021 among adults > 18 years of age selected through systematic random sampling. Data on socio demographic and COVID-19 knowledge were collected from 303 COVID-19 recovered and 1,976 non-COVID-19 infected individuals from community using a survey questionnaire. Stigma was assessed using COVID-19 Stigma Scale and Community COVID-19 Stigma Scale developed for the study. Informed consent was sought from the participants. Univariate and multivariate binary logistic regression analysis were conducted.
Results: Half of the participants (51.3%) from the community reported prevalence of severe stigmatizing attitudes toward COVID-19 infected while 38.6% of COVID-19 recovered participants reported experiencing severe stigma. Participants from the community were more likely to report stigmatizing attitudes toward COVID-19 infected if they were residents of high prevalent COVID-19 zone (AOR: 1.5; CI: 1.2-1.9), staying in rural areas (AOR: 1.5; CI:1.1-1.9), belonged to the age group of 18-30 years (AOR: 1.6; CI 1.2-2.0), were male (AOR: 1.6; CI: 1.3-1.9), illiterate (AOR: 2.7; CI: 1.8-4.2), or living in Maharashtra (AOR: 7.4; CI: 4.8-11.3). COVID-19 recovered participants had higher odds of experiencing stigma if they had poor knowledge about COVID-19 transmission (AOR: 2.8; CI: 1.3-6.3), were staying for 6-15 years (AOR: 3.24; CI: 1.1-9.4) in the current place of residence or belonged to Delhi (AOR: 5.3; CI: 1.04-26.7).
Conclusion: Findings indicated presence of stigmatizing attitudes in the community as well as experienced stigma among COVID-19 recovered across selected study sites in India during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Study recommends timely dissemination of factual information to populations vulnerable to misinformation and psychosocial interventions for individuals affected by stigma.
Keywords: COVID-19; India; first wave; stigma; stigmatizing attitudes.
Copyright © 2022 Adhikari, Aggarwal, Nair, Joshi, Diwan, Stephen, Devi, Kumar Mishra, Yadav, Bangar, Sahu, Yadav, Ovung, Gulati, Sharma, Singh, Duggal, Sharma, Ujagare, Padmakar Chinchore, Rebecca, Rani, Selvaraj, Xavier, Peter, Watson, Kannan, Asmathulla, Bhattacharya, Turuk, Palo, Kanungo, Kumar Behera, Pandey, Zaman, Misra, Kumar, Behera, Singh, Narain, Kant, Sahay, Tiwari, Thomas and Rao.