How much do Jamaicans really know about the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their mental and physical health? And are we as resilient and agile as the public relations brochures insist?

There is little doubt that five years after the March 10, 2020 detection of the novel coronavirus in Jamaica our people have moved on, resuming their daily lives as if they had not been hit by the worst pandemic in nearly 100 years.

But with little or no research of substance being conducted on the possible lingering effects of the pandemic, we might never know the full impact of the event or whether we can truly say that we have recovered.

To mark the fifth anniversary of COVID-19 as a pandemic, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton made a fair attempt at assessing how Jamaicans coped with the outbreak. However, the assessment was lacking in depth and was largely a feel-good effort.

“The pandemic tested the bounds of our capacity, our agility, our resolve. Still, we tackled head-on its myriad challenges that were fuelled by, at times, high levels of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear within the population,” Dr Tufton wrote.

“The lessons that have come from that experience are such that they serve us today and will continue to do so as we pursue the transformation of public health in Jamaica — from the multi-billion-dollar improvements to the physical, as well as the information communication and technology infrastructure now being pursued in our health facilities…”

While we salute the efforts of the health ministry and the sacrifice made by our health personnel in handling the 157,458 COVID-19 cases and 3,875 deaths, it would be useful to have an understanding of what still lies below the surface by drilling down further.

For example, we have not seen anything that matches the recent public survey conducted by the Gallup polling organisation in the US which found that Americans’ mental and physical health “accelerated sharply with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020”.

Gallup’s research, conducted in partnership with West Health, a family of non-profit and non-partisan organisations, said 75 per cent of US adults rated their mental health and 76 per cent their physical health as either “excellent” or “good”, contrasting with a record-high 89 per cent rating their mental health positively as recently as 2012, and a high of 82 per cent for physical health in 2003.

A separate Gallup research found a six per cent increase in obese Americans between 2019 and 2023, as well as big reduction in healthy eating since.

The downturn in Americans’ perceptions of their mental health had occurred across all major gender, age, racial, education, income, religious, and political party groups but the decline was particularly sharp among young adults, especially young women.

Gallup also found that in respect of school-age children, 45 per cent of US parents say the pandemic has had a negative impact on their child’s social skills development; 22 per cent report the social difficulty is ongoing, while 23 per cent say it has eased. Similarly, 42 per cent added that their child’s mental health has been negatively affected by the pandemic, including 21 per cent who say the issue persists.

This kind of information will ensure that we can anticipate and plan for ongoing and future pandemic-related health problems.