**7. Preventive interventions**

### **7.1 Routine screening of patients and their HCWs**

Worldwide epidemiological research is urgently needed to evaluate the amount of anxiety, worry, and helplessness and other mental health concerns related to COVID-19. This would aid in developing tailored mental health initiatives (e.g., those who live in villages). Experiences from past pandemics point out the urgent need for screening for mental health problems, monitoring its trend, referral of cases, and providing suitable interventions has to be routine practice during the pandemic period [73, 74]. The target groups of such screening strategies must include COVID-19 infected patients, their high risk contacts, and healthcare workers, as well as those with past history of mental health illnesses. The following questionnaires may be utilized for routine screening:

a.COVID-19 stress scale [75]


d.Anxiety of COVID Scale (CAS) [77]

e.Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FC-19S) [78]

f. COVID-19 Pandemic Mental Health Questionnaire [79]

The abovementioned questionnaires were newly developed or modified versions of existing mental health screening questionnaires. It is therefore emphasized that the pre-existing validated survey tools such as GAD-65, PSS-10, PHQ-9 and DASS-21 can be also utilized for routine screening purposes and have been validated for the same.
