Table 1.

Inclusion/exclusion criteria for including studies in the present review.

	Inclusion criteria	Exclusion criteria
Population	Studies on participants with or without being positive for COVID-19	Studies conducted on healthcare workers and individuals with specific illnesses
Intervention	Literature focusing on fear of COVID-19	Studies conducted on general mental status
Comparison	Studies comparing the extent of fear across various cohorts such as children, adolescents, adults, and older adults	Studies comparing fear between individuals with and without illnesses
Outcome	Fear of COVID-19	Not related to fear of COVID-19
Others	Studies published in the English language from December 2019 to August 2020 and studies with full-text being available by journal or pre-print server	Publications of letters to editors, correspondence, point of views, ideas, opinions, studies exclusively done on healthcare workers, studies on development and validation of the fear scales