  A possible effective restoration of the anomalous $U_A(1)$ symmetry would
have a non-trivial effect on the global phase diagram of QCD. In this work we
investigate the effective restoration of the $U_A(1)$ through the calculation
of scalar and pseudo-scalar screening masses and corresponding
susceptibilities, for physical and lower than physical pion masses.
Calculations have been performed in (2+1)-flavor HISQ discretization scheme
with a physical value of the strange quark mass. Preliminary calculations of
the continuum extrapolated scalar and pseudo-scalar masses are presented, based
on lattices with three different temporal extent. Non-trivial structure of the
difference between scalar and pseudo-scalar susceptibilites are discussed for
$N_\tau=8$ lattices.
