Effect of COVID-19 Quarantine on Voice Handicap Index in Female Classical Singers.

The study asked singers to rate their own voice and its handicap; no acoustic analysis, laryngeal imaging or perceptual rating by a clinician was performed, so it cannot say whether the quarantine changed actual voice quality. The questionnaire did not screen for existing voice disorders, so the sample probably mixed healthy singers with singers who already had vocal problems, and the two cannot be separated. Fifty-five participants is a small number, and the authors state the sample was limited by how long they had to collect it. Only women were surveyed, and only Brazilian Portuguese speakers with at least a year of professional experience, so the results say nothing about male singers, amateurs or other languages. Singers were recruited from former university students with publicised careers, a group likely to be more trained and more experienced than working classical singers in general. A single questionnaire at one point in July 2020 cannot show what happened to singers' voices over the whole pandemic or whether these feelings lasted.

Funded by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior in Brazil under finance code 001, a public research agency. No commercial sponsor and no author conflicts are reported in the text.

Do not read the 47.7 out of 120 score as proof that quarantine left professional singers' voices unharmed. The singers rated their own voice, no one examined their larynx or measured their voice, and the sample may have included singers who already had vocal disorders. This is what a small group of experienced Brazilian singers said about themselves, not a finding about how their voices changed.