Under the title “Public health communication and the Covid-19: A review of the literature during the first wave” the paper aims to identify and analyse the impact generated by the first wave of Covid-19 (January-June 2020) in public health communication, in a context in which scams and false information circulated in parallel with the virus.

Published in the first quartile Profesional de la Information, the article shows how the expansion of the Covid-19 virus in early 2020 grew in parallel with the spread of rumours, false or unverified news and even contradictions between information sources and health sources. As the authors explain, “it was the first pandemic to be broadcast live on social media, which were hyper-consulted before every turn of the health crisis. Unlike what happened in other crises such as Ebola or avian flu, this time governments and health workers were  unable to control the flow of information, outpaced in time and credibility by social networks,” and therefore, the disinformation that occurred “was of such caliber that the WHO described it as “infodemia”.

To prepare the study, the researchers carried out a systematic review of the articles published in PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science, following the Prisma guidelines, which yielded a figure of 1,157 papers that analysed public health communication during the first wave of Covid-19. Seven keywords were used as a filter. A corpus of 193 articles was obtained and the articles were analysed in their entirety. Four main themes were identified: the need for massive public health literacy; social networks as a source of information and disinformation during the pandemic; the uncertain response of institutional communication; and media coverage of the pandemic.

After analysing the contents, the authors propose a large-scale health literacy programme that also involves the citizens themselves and point out the need to work on health information together: governments, health institutions and the media.

In addition, they point to the huge proliferation of fake news shared on social media, and the confusion and misinformation generated during the first wave. All this, as the authors state, confirms the need of taking measures to control in the future any “infodemia” around a health crisis and to encourage the use of expert professionals as reliable sources of information.

“The networks, which in inexperienced hands caused confusion and anxiety during the first wave, must transmit clarity and serenity in authorised and reliable hands, taking the lead in communicating any incident and clearly explaining the ways to prevent contagion,” as pointed out in the article.