Elsevier

Sleep Medicine

Volume 73, September 2020, Pages 1-10
Sleep Medicine

Original Article
Sleep health early in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in the United States: integrating longitudinal, cross-sectional, and retrospective recall data

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2020.06.032Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Good sleep quality helps people resist viral infections and function optimally.

  • Global sleep quality was generally resilient to pandemic-related changes to life.

  • Healthy, non-shiftworkers showedimprovements in sleep in longitudinal analyses.

  • Participants recalled their pre-pandemic sleep as better than it was.

  • Sleep worsened in shift workers, caregivers, and people with high COVID-19-related stress.

Abstract

Background

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused substantial changes in lifestyle, responsibilities, and stressors. Such dramatic societal changes might cause overall sleep health to decrease (stress view), to remain unchanged (resilience view), or even to improve (reduced work/schedule burden view).

Methods

We addressed this question using longitudinal, cross-sectional, and retrospective recall methodologies in 699 American adult participants in late March 2020, two weeks following the enactment of social distancing and shelter-in-place policies in the United States.

Results

Relative to baseline data from mid February 2020, cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses demonstrated that average sleep quality was unchanged, or even improved, early in the pandemic. However, there were clear individual differences: approximately 25% of participants reported that their sleep quality had worsened, which was explained by stress vulnerability, caregiving, adverse life impact, shift work, and presence of COVID-19 symptoms.

Conclusions

Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic has detrimentally impacted some individuals' sleep health while paradoxically benefited other individuals’ sleep health by reducing rigid work/school schedules such as early morning commitments.

Keywords

Epidemic
Quarantine
World health organization
SARS-CoV-2
Recall bias
Circadian delay

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