Objectives: The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing health and socioeconomic inequalities around the globe. In order to mitigate the effects of extreme isolation and containment measures, governments have taken steps to protect the health, the economy, employment, and socially vulnerable groups. The health crisis should be treated as a pretext in order to ensure universal access to health and socioeconomics.The aim of this review was the presentation of the way the pandemic contributed to the worldwide deterioration of health inequities affecting in parallel the social protection in the health, economic and educational sector along with other factors, the effects and the measures taken, in order to face the consequences of a pandemic on the social protection in Greece in comparison with other countries of Europe.
Methods: A cross-sectional bibliographic study was undertaken using keywords and phrases such as "COVID-19," "Health inequities," "Social protection," and "Social identifiers." The search was done through the search engines google scholar, PubMed, Health link, and Elsevier using either the Greek or English language. The total number of evaluated read-used articles was 30. Inclusion criteria were free full-text meta-analyses, reviews, and systematic reviews.
Results: The socially disadvantaged groups in the United States were found to have a lower life expectancy and higher morbidity rates than privileged social groups, as economic, health, and sociocultural precariousness are major causes of death. Patients with underlying diseases are vulnerable groups and increase the risk of coronavirus infection and quite often lead to loss of life due to complications of the disease. Greece is ranked in the 4th worst position with 61.10% in employment in all European Union (EU) countries. There is a significant increase in deaths with a percentage change from 2018 to date of 17.50%. It also holds the 3rd worst position among EU countries in the field of unemployment, while women hold the 2nd worst with a rate of 13.50%. Overworked and overindebted households due to extreme measures due to the pandemic (reduction of working time, quarantine) led to unemployment, loss of income, poverty, widening social inequalities, and deteriorating care for people with disabilities. Children due to the closure of schools and the loss of school meals are led to food insecurity. The pandemic also left many children orphaned after the death of their parents by COVID-19, with psychosocial problems exacerbated by school closures.
Conclusions: The pandemic has exacerbated long-standing health and socioeconomic inequalities, stressing to governments the need to adopt political strategies that will help address them. Measures have been taken in Greece for labor protection, and unemployment benefits, such as the two-month extension of the subsidy period for the unemployed and the long-term unemployed. Minimum insurance days have also been reduced so that citizens employed in tourism, catering, and other seasonal occupations can receive unemployment benefits.
Keywords: COVID-19; Determinants of health; Economic inequality; Health inequities; Welfare State.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.