30 THE QUEENS COURIER • WELLNESS • MAY 21, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
wellness
Online survey focuses on stress, anxiety during COVID-19 pandemic
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
rpozarycki@qns.com
@QNS
Aft er weeks of being stuck inside
your New York City home or apartment
during the COVID-19 pandemic, you’re
feeling a range of emotions — and chances
are, stress and anxiety are chief among
them.
PatientWisdom, a New Haven,
Connecticut, based company that
describes itself as a “health engagement
soft ware solution platform,” launched its
“Coping with COVID-19 Challenges”
survey asking participants to describe
their stress levels and what causes them
anxiety over the weeks of dealing with the
pandemic.
Gregory Makoul, founder of
PatientWisdom, says the fi ve-minute survey
Nearly 150 NYC kids diagnosed
with illness linked to coronavirus
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
Photo via Flickr/Mayor’s de Blasio’s offi ce
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio
announced that 145 children in New York
City have contracted a rare illness linked
to the novel coronavirus.
“Th e CDC has confi rmed a link to
COVID-19 so this is important,” said
Mayor Bill de Blasio about the rare illness
the agency is now calling Multi-System
Infl ammatory Syndrome in Children
(MIS-C). “We’ve assumed it but they have
done additional research to 100 percent
confi rm it.”
Out of the 145 children diagnosed with
the illness that health offi cials previously
referred to as pediatric multisystem
infl ammatory syndrome (PMIS), 67 tested
positive for the virus or its antibodies
suggesting that they at one point contracted
the disease and then recovered.
Th e CDC released a national standard
defi nition to help doctors and scientists
better stay on the same page in terms of
diagnosing the rare illness, which adds
new symptoms like sluggishness and irritability.
Parents should contact their health care
provider immediately if a child 21 years
old or young starts to show symptoms
like fever, sluggishness, irritability, sharp
abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, rash,
conjunctivitis, enlarged lymph nodes, red
cracked lips, red tongue, swollen hands
and feet.
If parents do not have access to a health
care provider, the mayor encouraged
them to call 311 to be connected to the clinician
at one of the city’s public hospitals.
Th e city’s Health Department adopted
that defi nition, the mayor said, and is now
applying it “back over the last few weeks’’
to learn more about the cases of MIS-C
city health offi cials have seen so far.
“We’ll have updated numbers
with this new defi nition, the
MIS-C defi nition, shortly,” the
mayor said. “But it’s the same
bottom line, look for these
symptoms in your children,
act quickly to see
them, get to health care
quickly.”
allows residents to anonymously provide
insight on their stress levels.
Th e data gathered will be forwarded to
various public and private organizations
in each region to help decision-makers
determine if certain resources are needed
to help put minds at ease.
“Th ese are real world perspectives from
people dealing with this right now,” he
said. “Let’s get the results from these geographic
areas and bring them to people
who can do something to help.”
So far, about 600 individuals have participated
in the ongoing survey, Makoul
said. Th e preliminary results, he noted,
are no surprise: People are feeling much
more stress these days because of the pandemic,
and they’re most concerned about
their loved one’s well-beings.
“People are worried about their family,
they’re not worried about themselves,”
Makoul said.
He also pointed to one particularly
troubling aspect of the survey: that only
64 percent of respondents said they were
being careful about avoiding infection.
“Th at’s just not good enough for this pandemic,”
he observed.
PatientWisdom has promoted the
COVID-19 survey primarily through
social media. Th ere’s no set expiration
date or target number of participants.
“Th is is obviously a very fl uid situation.
Photo via Getty Images
Life’s not going to be back to normal for a
while,” he said. “We can look at our perspectives
as they change over time, but
we’re not planning on closing the survey”
any time soon.
PatientWisdom plans to release its fi rst
report on the COVID-19 survey at the
end of May.
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