Introduction:

The COVID-19 disease has caused damage not only to people's physical health but also to their mental health.

Materials and methods:

The objective of this research was to analyze the perception of risk about the Coronavirus and the psychological impact that people are taking into account. The study was cross-sectional, an ad hoc questionnaire was applied to measure the perception of risk about COVID-19, BDI-II to measure depression and BAI to measure anxiety.

Results:

244 people were surveyed in a virtual way, between 18 and 70 years of age, being 68.90% women and 31.10% men from the different departments of Bolivia. The risk perception that most affected people was fear of infecting the family (59.4%), concern about the economic repercussions (45.5%) and concern about personal infection (46.7%) . People manifested moderate anxiety symptoms (68.9%), mild depressive symptoms (45.9%) and moderate (43.4%).

Discussion:

Bolivia doesn't have studies on the perception of risk and the psychological impact of coronavirus. This study will provide foundation for future comparisons.

Conclusion:

The risk perception that caused the greatest negative impact in the population was the concern about infecting a family member. Moderate levels of anxiety symptoms, mild and moderate depressive symptoms were found in most of the population, people living in the departments of Beni, Santa Cruz and persons who worked in the banking, security and health areas were the most affected. A relationship was found between anxiety and the negative effect of information.