Increases in Alcohol-Related Diseases Due to COVID-19 Pandemic

Despite recommendations from the World Health Organization to ban all alcohol sales during lockdowns, the US and many other countries made decisions to keep alcohol retailers open during the pandemic. A recent article from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) proposes that this decision could have unintentionally conveyed messges about the importance of alcohol, which could have increased overall alcohol consumption.

The JAMA article reviews research that has found that 20% to 40% of individuals surveyed reported consuming more alcohol than usual during the pandemic.