An Assessment of Communication Challenges during COVID-19

Communication for COVID-19 is to educate the public about protecting themselves from infections. Having sprung wildly from Wuhan, China, the virus has spread from the United States and 31 territories. Strazewski (2020) writes, “How Science Communication is failing during Covid-19,” published in the Journal of American Medical Association, regrets prevalent inadequacy of reporting. Organizations such as World Health Origination (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admit communication is important, asserting that trust, transparency, public interest, and planning are crucial in messaging. Companies should, therefore, rethink advertising and promotion strategies and reassure shareholders and stakeholders of the volatility of the epidemic. In “Evolving Outbreaks and Evolving Communication,” the authors acknowledge that before an outbreak is recognized and an investigation begins, a limited number of persons might be exposed to health risks without experiencing illness. Unlike yesteryears, communicating health messages today during an outbreak calls for a mix of channels that include social media management. Furthermore, partnerships should be developed between the science community and communications specialist from a global perspective.

In early 2004, WHO began an effort to construct evidence-based, field-tested communication guidance to promote the public health goal of rapid outbreak control with the least possible disruption to society.
The first step was an extensive review of the risk communication literature and identified risk communication components directly related to outbreaks. In turn, the material was distilled into select features associated with communication effectiveness or failures. Finally, the features were assessed by outbreak control representing a variety of cultures, political systems, plus economic development. The results were a short list of the following communication practices: • Trust -The overriding goal for outbreak communication is to communicate with the public in ways that build, maintain, or restore trust. This is the case across cultures, political systems, and level of a country's development. The consequences of losing the public's trust can be severe in health, economic, and political terms. Building trust internally, between communicators and policy makers, is critical and is sometimes referred to as "trust triangle." Trust in communicating with the public is critical in both directionsevidence shows that public panic is rare and rare when people have been candidly informed.
• Announcing Early -The parameters of trust are established in the first official announcement of the outbreak. The message's timing, candor, and comprehensiveness may make it the most important of all outbreak communications. Evidence shows that, the longer officials withhold worrisome information, the more frightening the information will seem when it is releasedespecially if it is released by an outside source.
• Transparency -To maintain the public's trust throughout an outbreak requires transparency. In this case, communication must be candid, easily understood, complete, and factually accurate.
Transparency provides many benefits, including demonstrating how, at a time of uncertainty and to www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/rhs Research in Health Science Vol. 6, No. 2, 2021 26 Published by SCHOLINK INC. confront unknowns, outbreak managers are systematically seeking answers. Media preparation should be an essential component of professional development for public officials and should precede each media interaction.
• The Public -Understanding the public is critical to effective communication. It is usually difficult to change pre-existing beliefs, unless those beliefs are explicitly addressed. And it is nearly impossible to design successful messages that bridge the gap between the expert and the public without knowing what the public thinks. Hence, the public's concerns must be appreciated even if they seem unfounded, while risk communication messages should include information about what the public can do to make themselves safer. This affords people a sense of control over their own health and safety, which allows them to react to the risk with more reasoned responses. Taking it a step further, Argent (2020)  Also communicate with employees and with your organizationthey are your most important ambassadors to the community. The organization or company needs to demystify the health crisis and to put everyone's mind at ease and provide hope for the future. Studies show that managers play an important role in reducing employee anxiety. Argent recalls that, after 9/11, many employees described how important it was to hear the voice of the leader or managerwhether live or through email, phone messages, or social media. When COVID-19 hit the school, the Master of Busines Administration (MBA) program leadership team camped out in a central location to ease everyone's anxiety and to provide updates regularly.
Communicating regularly with customers is also vital. Obviously, customers require a different approach than employees given that companies do not have the same access with their constituencies. Nonetheless, you should, 1) Focus on what is important to the customer, 2) Provide relief when possible, for instance, "CVS Caremark has special service. Working to waive early refill limits on a 30-day prescription maintenance medications," 3) Focus on empathy, rather than trying to create selling opportunities.
Companies should rethink advertising and promotion strategies in view of the virus. In the midst of a market economy, reassure shareholders and/or stakeholders since the epidemic has created intense volatility in the financial markets and turned what was an incredible "bull market" into a potential recession. Thus, be transparent in communicating near-term challenges, use the crisis as an opportunity to reenforce the corporation's long-term fundamentals, and communicate what you are doing about the problem. Of importance, too, is to be proactive within the organization since what happens with COVID-19 affects everyone in the communities around them. At least, organizations should make sure their actions or decisions do not negatively affect members of the community. Public relations or good will measures will help -such as providing cleaning supplies or food for those in quarantine, providing information to the local media to help calm down the communities while enhancing your organization's credibility, and providing transparency through local media about your company. Zaki (2020), in an article published by The Washington Post entitled, "Social distancing shouldn't mean losing human connection [communication]," urges you to send a message to an old friend on Instagram, FaceTime your cousin, and "watch 'The Bachelor' together; and/or post a video that reflects on this weird moment.
Don't shy away from being vulnerable or asking other, too." Zaki believes that physical and emotional distance do not have to coincide.

Steps Taken by Government
Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is keen on control of the epidemic. Under the title, "Communicating During an Outbreak or Public Investigation," Abbigail et al. (2018) address two stages of communicating an epidemic to the public. In "Evolving Outbreaks and Evolving Communication," the authors acknowledge that before an outbreak is recognized and an investigation begins, limited number of persons might be exposed to health risks without experiencing illness. As increasing number of persons are exposed to the risk or become ill, healthcare providers and others become aware of the higher than expected number of illness and begin reporting the unusually high occurrences to local and state health authorities. This situation often prompts an outbreak investigation, and as that outbreak evolves, communications about it must evolve as well.
In today's 24-hour news and digital media environment, people constantly receive information from many sources, ranging from print media to television to alerts and social media and on mobile devices.
And immediately after the news media or community learn of a public health-related outbreak investigation, they want to know what is happening and who is affected. When the cause is rare, but might cause substantial harm, news outlets often treat the event as breaking news and begin substantial coverage. Such is the coverage that is ascribed to COVID-19. everything is on the line and you can be the next person in the hospital bed, it's the experts that you want to listen to." The dilemma illustrates a much larger problem facing scientists, public health professionals, journalists, and science communication practitioners, namely that, "A focus on accuracy and scientific facts is the By the same token, correctives to misinformation provide instant gratification during an otherwise unpredictable and long-term crisis that is yet to provide scientists and policy-makers with a myriad of success stories. As the COVID-19 "infodemic" escalates, those communicating scientific information run the risk of not only oversimplifying the misinformation problem, but also failing to recognize and address other factors that complicate efforts to communicate, effectively, information about COVIC-19.
To address success for mankind, the scientific community and communication must not sojourn in isolation. On the contrary, they should embrace mankind's wellness and embrace mutual inclusivity by acquiring and sharing information for mankind's uses and gratification.
HealthyPeople.gov urges citizens to visit coronavirus.gov to get the latest updates on COVID19, along with Healthy People, an online publication addressing health communication and health information technology. Its goal is not only the use of health communication strategies and health information technology to improve population health outcomes and health care quality, but also to achieve health equity. The initiative stems from the notion that ideas about health are shaped by the communication, information, and technology that people interact with every day, and to emphasize the fact that health communication and information technology (IT) are central to health care, public health, and the way society views health. These communication processes, therefore, play a significant role in the ways and context to which professionals and the public search for, understand, and use health information that has an impact on their decisions and actions. prevention and control messaging is more likely to be achieved when we engage the voices of those who live in the communitiesparticularly communities that bear the heaviest burden of the pandemic.
Research on health disparities, especially on antiracism, demands a focus on risk environment and risk situation as opposed to the conventional epidemiologic focus on risk factor which tends to place the behavior change of individuals which considers structure and context to define and confine vulnerability.
Therefore, community-engaged communication is crucial for acknowledging the voices of those in the community with culturally relevant historical and structural inequities that define their preexisting chronic health conditions on the one hand, and their preexisting vulnerable living and working conditions on the other. To understand and serve these communities, the important role of culture matters and must be considered in developing and sustaining a communication strategy.
The government is a strong proponent of vaccine(s) to combat COVID -19. However, Donahue (2021) writing to reflect tri-county in Charleston, South Carolina, under the title, "Frustrations, confusion for families persist in seeking the coronavirus vaccine," reports that families in more rural areas complain they are trying to get vaccine appointments for loved ones, but only to encounter herculean challenges.
For example, Ford, a resident, said it took her weeks to secure an appointment for the first dose for herself and her husband. "That was only through word-of-mouth from a family member who happens to know somebody else who happened to say call DHEC (Department of Health and Environmental Control)." Ford also said she is looking for a second dose of the vaccine for her sister with a disability. Eventually, her sister was able to set up an appointment.
However, upon arrival, the appointment appeared nowhere in the books, to which Ford reacted, "She went there only for them to say we're only giving it to age 70 and above . . . which made me upset and emotional, and they didn't give it to her." Her sister is due for her second vaccine, but regrettably, she cannot get one. She describes it as disheartening when you believe you have accomplished something and to fall on your face and start all over again climbing the ladder -only to get nowhere. Patricia, another citizen, checked online for days before deciding to drive 45 miles outside Georgetown country to get her first COVID-19 vaccine. "Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Publix, Tideland's health," she said. "When you go to the sites where the vaccines are supposed to be available, you find yourself at a roadblock."

Cultural Implications
That culture matters is central to effective communication for COVID-19 messaging for community engagement. Here, culture is defined as a collective sense of consciousness that influences and conditions perception, behaviors, and power, and how these are shared and communicated. Although It is important to reemphasize that culture is key to a global response to community engagement. Indeed, COVID-19 unveils a pattern of insensitivity that has also been evident in communication about Ebola. In early stages of the Ebola outbreak in 2014-2015, conventional messages did more harm than good because they did not value the cultural roles associated with death. Two examples of these messages were, "When you get Ebola, you will die," or "If someone is sick, don't touch him." In Liberia, the high death rate from malaria and other diseases among the poor blunted messages for urgency to heed prevention and treatment of Ebola. In the West Point Slum of Monrovia, for instance, adhering to physical distancing for Ebola and COVID-19 is made difficult by sea erosion from the past ten years which reduced the land mass by 50 percent even though the same people lived there. It is obvious that structural inequities often reveal the limit of individual choices in the absence of corrective actions to address contextual constraints over which the community has no control. These constraints are the preexisting contexts of inequities in many black and brown countries, globally.

Global Perspective
US exceptionalism reigns in several ways. The first to go to the moon and usually referred to with pride as "best country in the world." However, this glorious reputation is being challenged. Ollove (2020) writes in, "How miscommunication and selfishness hampered America's COVIC-19 response," and wonders why the US has squandered its exceptionalism. In the case of the pandemic, the author implies that the US "… has been uniquely hapless, ineffective, undisciplined and selfish," and that, "the US has handled the health crisis as badly as any country has." It is unfortunate that, although the US represents only four percent of the world's population, the country accounts for a quarter of all COVID-19 cases and 22 percent of all deaths.
Regrettably, claims the author, the country whose military and economic might powered a victory in the World War II, and whose confidence and technological wizardry has dazzled the global community, now finds itself as a reverse role model during the worst public health crisis in a century. "The US response," reiterates Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, "is a textbook example of how to do it wrong." Epidemiologists point out that some states, particularly in New England, have fared better than others, a fact that reflects the miserably disjointed national response to COVID-19.
Relatively successful countries, such as, Denmark, Germany, Senegal, and Thailand have put out messaging that is clear, consistent, and transparent. They have implemented nationwide policies that are guided by science, rather than politics. Above all, they command strong national leadership and developed national policies that were decided upon early and quickly based on health principles and communicated clearly and consistently.
Some experts admit that community spirit has been stronger elsewhere that in the US. "One of the things that strikes me about the rest of the world compared to the US is there is much more community sense,"  Nevertheless, White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, defended the Trump Administration's strategy.
In an interview on CNBC, he said the administration led by overseeing the procurement and production of masks, ventilators, and other resources. Coincidentally, the Foreign Policy Analytics examined multiple metrics to gauge the performance of 36 nations in responding to COVID-19. In addition to each country's death rate and case rate, researchers considered the state of each nation's public health system before the pandemic, the timeliness and stringency of its public health actions ( researchers concluded that the US has not limited press freedom in response to COVID-19. Here, the researchers observed that certain states decided to reopen when cases were not even going down, and doubled down, and began reopening when cases were still going up. It is true that adopting measures that change at state boundaries might make sense with determining speed limits, but not with communicable disease. Ultimately, one observer arrived at the conclusion: "My friends overseas see American exceptionalism as selfish." Across the Atlantic in Britain, D'Urso (2020), BuzzFeed staff, takes pride in declaring that the newsletter he is associated with, prides in trustworthy and relevant reporting on COVI-19. In "Communication Issue Well, the UK bade farewell to EU on January 31, 2020, but is still following almost all EU rules and regulations during the transition period. But later in the day, the line of communication changednot Brexit. "Owing to an initial communication problem," said the spokesperson, "the UK did not receive an invitation to join in four joint procurements in response to the coronavirus pandemic." Even technology savvy Japan has not fared well in the phase of COVID-19. Snow (2020), in an opinion titled, "Japan's government has failed coronavirus communications test," the author remarks that instead of data and reassurance, then prime minister Shinzo Abe led with aloofness. The ascribable view is that the prime minister found it easier to spread reassuring messages in the Middle East, rather than at home in Japan. During his mid-January (2020)

Communicating with Internal Audiences
• Provide opportunities for employees to share concerns and offer remote working situations where possible without being punitive. Employees who feel respected, and that their health is being prioritized, are employees who are loyal and motivated.
• Over-communicate. Provide ongoing updates to employees about any potential impacts. What are you proactively doing? Do not assume that employees know how you are prioritizing their health.
• Respond to feedback. While it is important to ask for feedback and communicate throughout times of stress, it is also important to respond to the feedback provided.

Conclusion
As of April 10, 2021, 561,000 deaths occurred in the US as a result of coronavirus, with 31 million cases.
The threat to life then, and now, is real and time to act is now. Of the essence, therefore, is to inform and educate the populations about protecting themselves from corona virus infections. Micallef (2020) anxiety. Argent recalls that, after 9/11, many employees described how important it was to hear the voice of the leader or managerwhether live or through email, phone messages, or social media.
Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is keen on control of the epidemic. Under the title, "Communicating During an Outbreak or Public Investigation," Abbigail et al. (2018) address two stages of communicating an epidemic to the public. In "Evolving Outbreaks and Evolving Communication," the authors acknowledge that, before an outbreak is recognized and an investigation begins, limited number of persons might be exposed to health risks without experiencing illness.
HealthyPeople.gov urges citizens to visit coronavirus.gov to get the latest updates on COVID19, along with Healthy People, an online publication addressing health communication and health information technology. It advocates the use of health communication strategies and health information technology to improve population health outcomes and health care quality, and to achieve health equity. The initiative stems from the notion that ideas about health are shaped by the communication, information, and technology that people interact with every day and to emphasize the fact that health communication and information technology (IT) are central to health care, public health, and the way society views health.
That culture matters, the authors stress, is central to effective COVID-19 messaging for community engagement. Here, culture is defined as a collective sense of consciousness that influences on conditions of perception, behaviors, and power and how these are shared and communicated. Although culture may appear neutral, its power to define identity and communities as a collective force is based on values expressed through institutions such as health care, education, and families. Hence, culture shapes language, which in turn shapes communication, both in message delivery and reception.
Some experts admit that community spirit has been stronger elsewhere that in the US. "One of the things that strikes me about the rest of the world compared to the US is there is much more community sense," Above all, the guiding principle for all stakeholder communications is to listen first, followed by empathetic and compassionate responses. In this regard, it is imperative to try and truly understand the