Fujii Daiki, Fujimura Maya Sophia, Ong Ken Ing Cherng, Jimba Masamine
Department of Community and Global Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
JMA J. 2022 Oct 17;5(4):535-538. doi: 10.31662/jmaj.2022-0073. Epub 2022 Sep 30.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in discrimination against patients and healthcare workers in the beginning. As more information about COVID-19 prevention became available, discrimination toward the patients and healthcare workers gradually reduced. Instead, people wearing masks in the general public were heavily discriminated when mask-wearing was recommended only for healthcare workers. After the universal use of masks was recommended, discrimination against those who were wearing masks decreased and increased among those who do not wear masks. However, due to the introduction of vaccine passports, the target for discrimination has shifted to people who have not received COVID-19 vaccines. Narrowing vaccine disparity could prevent discrimination toward unvaccinated people. However, some people are hesitating vaccination or cannot be vaccinated because of their health status. These people will remain targets for discrimination even if vaccines were equally distributed. To prevent discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic, improving health literacy of the population could be effective in two ways. First, health literacy could reduce vaccine hesitancy by enabling people to critically evaluate vaccine information. Second, health literacy enables people to respect decisions of others to avoid vaccination. Therefore, interventions improving health literacy have the potential to contribute to cutting the chain of discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行初期导致了对患者和医护人员的歧视。随着更多关于COVID-19预防的信息出现，对患者和医护人员的歧视逐渐减少。相反，当仅建议医护人员佩戴口罩时，普通民众中戴口罩的人受到了严重歧视。在建议普遍佩戴口罩后，对戴口罩者的歧视减少了，而对不戴口罩者的歧视增加了。然而，由于引入了疫苗护照，歧视的目标已转向未接种COVID-19疫苗的人。缩小疫苗差距可以防止对未接种疫苗者的歧视。然而，一些人由于健康状况而犹豫是否接种疫苗或无法接种疫苗。即使疫苗得到平等分配，这些人仍将成为歧视的目标。为防止COVID-19大流行期间的歧视，提高民众的健康素养可能在两方面有效。首先，健康素养可以通过使人们能够批判性地评估疫苗信息来减少疫苗犹豫。其次，健康素养使人们能够尊重他人不接种疫苗的决定。因此，提高健康素养的干预措施有可能有助于切断COVID-19大流行期间的歧视链条。
