Vocal Habilitation in Post-Acute Symptomatic COVID-19 Recovery: A Narrative Review of Strategies for Singing Teachers

The World Health Organisation declared a global health pandemic on March 11, 2020. Over two and a half years later, symptomatic COVID-19 infection and reinfection rates remain problematically high throughout the world. Singers, singing teachers, and other professional voice users affected by COVID-19 report significant vocal, respiratory, psychological, and stamina disturbances that impact their work. Mitigating recovery time is essential for the professional voice user. Limited research has been conducted on vocal health and production for singers affected by COVID-19. This narrative literature review aims to synthesise knowledge of symptoms that affect vocal health and production. Multidisciplinary literature from the vocology, speech pathology, otolaryngology, psychology, education, singing voice pedagogy, and voice science fields were comprehensively searched, screened, reviewed, and synthesised. Findings were used to frame practice-based strategies to support the vocal habilitation of singers recovering from symptomatic COVID-19. KEYWORDS: vocology, singing voice pedagogy, voice disorders, COVID-19