The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on health care workers' anxiety levels: a meta-analysis.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has been declared a public health emergency of international concern, causing excessive anxiety among health care workers. Additionally, publication bias and low-quality publications have become widespread, which can result in the dissemination of unreliable information. A meta-analysis was performed for this study with the following two aims: (1) to examine the prevalence of anxiety among health care workers and determine whether it has increased owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) to investigate whether there has been an increase in publication bias. Methods: All relevant studies published between 2015 and 2020 were searched in electronic databases (namely Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, PsycInfo, PsyArXiv, and medRxiv). The heterogeneity of the studies was assessed using the Results: A total of 122 studies with 118,025 participants met the inclusion criteria. Eighty-eight articles (75,066 participants) were related to COVID-19, 13 articles (9,222 participants) were unrelated to COVID-19 ( Conclusions: Determining whether the anxiety state of health care workers is altered by the COVID-19 pandemic is currently difficult. However, there is evidence that their anxiety levels may always be high, which suggests that more attention should be paid to their mental health. Furthermore, we found a substantial publication bias; however, the quality of the studies was relatively stable and reliable.