In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many nations around the world instituted strict social distancing measures. Although necessary to deter the spread of the virus, these measures may also have had adverse health repercussions by increasing social isolation. Using a national longitudinal study from Canada, in which respondents were surveyed in March 2020 at the beginning of stay-at-home orders and again two months later in May, we show that, at baseline, loneliness was inversely associated with perceptions of self-rated health, and there was a beneficial indirect association between respondents’ number of social network confidants and perceived health through lower levels of loneliness. Between March and May, social network confidants decreased and loneliness increased; these changes were independent of each other and contributed to declines in self-rated health. Greater loneliness at baseline was also associated with declines in self-rated health. Our observations suggest that social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic impaired social connectedness, thereby resulting in declines in perceptions of health. We conclude by discussing several policy-related implications of our findings.

在COVID-19大流行之后，世界上许多国家制定了严格的社会隔离措施。尽管必须采取措施阻止病毒传播，但这些措施也可能通过增加社会隔离度而对健康产生不利影响。根据加拿大进行的一项国家纵向研究，在2020年3月开始在家中用餐时对受访者进行了调查，然后在5月的两个月后再次对受访者进行了调查，结果表明，在基线时，孤独感与对自我意识的看法成反比。评估健康状况，并且通过降低孤独感，被访者的社交网络知己人数与感知健康之间存在有益的间接关联。在三月和五月之间，社交网络知己减少了，孤独感增加了；这些变化彼此独立，并导致自我评估的健康状况下降。基线时的孤独感也与自我评估的健康状况下降有关。我们的观察结果表明，在COVID-19大流行期间，社会距离疏远削弱了社会联系，从而导致人们对健康的看法下降。最后，我们讨论了我们发现的一些与政策相关的含义。