Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Associated with COVID-19 Among School Students in Bharatpur, Chitwan District of Nepal

Abstract

Background: The emergence of the novel Coronavirus in December 2019 from Wuhan, China, now named SARS-COV-2, which causes COVID-19 disease has now reached the pandemic level. The ongoing pandemic has already infected more than fifteen million people and over hundred thousand people around the world has died. The knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of people towards this disease is important to understand to limit its transmission.
 Methods: A purposive cross-sectional study was conducted among 101 secondary level students in Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal to assess their KAP.
 Results: The majority of the students were found to be knowledgeable of the timeline of the first outbreak (92.08%) and nearly three-fourth participants were aware of the hand-washing duration of 20 seconds (73.27%). The knowledge of the presence of disease in Nepal (50.50%), the causative agent of disease (65.53%), and symptoms (57.43%) showed that there is significant knowledge gap among participants. The good proportion of participants were found to have a positive attitude towards the prevention and control of the disease. The majority of the respondents reported using face mask (77.23%), adopting handwashing measures (79.21%) as preventive measures for COVID-19. The majority of the students were highly concerned about the disease.
 Conclusion: In summary, secondary level students of Chitwan, Nepal were found to have fair knowledge and understanding of the disease, showed a moderately positive attitude towards preventive measure and reported appropriate preventive practices against COVID-19. It is recommended that a similar

Commitment to COVID-19 Protective Measures in Schools and among School Children, Egypt

“…Surprisingly, despite very good commitment to face mask and hand cleaning at school entry but a significant percentage of children took off their masks during the school day (41.5%) and didn't use hand cleaner (28.1%), these findings indicated that children in that age need more intimate supervision and more frequent health education about the importance of protective measures. similar results were noted by Singh et al (21) who found that 98.7% used frequent hand washing or alcohol-based cleanser to protect against COVID-19 while relatively lower value was found by Subedi et al (20) , 77.23%reported using face mask, as previously mentioned, this difference may be explained by variation of socio-demographic criteria, cultural background, and economics in different communities.…”

“…The relatively lower rate of hand washing after coughing or sneezing, before eating, and on touching any surface in the current work may be due to the fact that it measures hand washing practice in schools while Xue et al (18) and Shehata et al (19) performed their study on school students during the period of school closure after the beginning of the pandemic, as the children at home had better access to hand washing than in school and they replace it with the use of alcoholbased hand cleaners. Subedi et al (20) found a relatively lower percentage, as 79.21% of students adopted handwashing measures as a preventive strategy; the difference in these values reflected variation between different localities in the perspective of awareness and willingness of the community about COVID-19 prevention.…”

Assessment of knowledge, attitude and practice of COVID-19 among dental patients visiting Pokhara Academy of Health Sciences, Pokhara

“…16 A study suggested that Nepalese students had good level of knowledge about COVID-19. 17 Another study emphasized that > 90% of participants were aware of agent, route of transmission and symptoms of COVID-19 and 75 % had knowledge on serious outcome in underlying clinical conditions. 18 Globally social distancing is the most compelling approach to reduce respiratory virus transmission in community.…”

Knowledge, practices and compliance related to COVID-19 among Nepalese population in Province 2, Nepal

“…More than 75.0% of participants had good knowledge about COVID-19 agents, main symptoms and reasoning of isolation. A study has suggested that Nepalese students had good knowledge of COVID-19 [ 27 ]. Also, another study emphasized that >90.0% of participants were aware of the agent, route of transmission and clinical symptoms and 75.0% had knowledge about serious outcomes of COVID-19 in underlying clinical conditions [ 28 ].…”