Knowledge, attitudes, practices of/towards COVID 19 preventive measures and symptoms: A cross-sectional study during the exponential rise of the outbreak in Cameroon

Abstract

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (COVID 19) has plagued the world with about 7,8 million confirmed cases and over 430,000 deaths as of June 13 th, 2020. The knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) people hold towards this new disease could play a major role in the way they accept measures put in place to curb its spread and their willingness to seek and adhere to care. We sought to understand if: a) demographic variables of Cameroonian residents could influence KAP and symptomatology, and b) KAP could influence the risk of having COVID19.A cross-sectional KAP/symptomatology online survey was conducted between April 20 to May 20. All analyses were performed using SPSS version 23. Of all respondents (1006), 53.1% were female, 26.6% were students, 26.9% interacted face to face and 62.8% were residents in Yaoundé with a median age of 33. The overall high score was 84.19% for knowledge, 69% for attitude, and 60.8% for practice towards COVID 19. Age > 20 years was associated with a high knowledge of COVID 19. Women had lower practice scores compared to men (OR = 0.72; 95%CI 0.56–0.92). 41 respondents had ≥3 symptoms and only 9 (22.95%) of them had called 1510 (emergency number). There was no significant difference between KAP and symptomatology. The presence of ≥ 3 symptoms in 4% of respondents (with 56% of them having co-morbidities) supports the current trend in the number of confirmed cases (8681) in Cameroon. The continuous increase in the number of cases and the overall good KAP warrants further investigation to assess the effectiveness of the measures put in place to curb the spread of the disease. Sensitization is paramount to preclude negative health-seeking behaviors and encourage positive preventive and therapeutic practices, for fear of an increase in mortality.

Knowledge, Attitudes, and Preventative Practices (KAPs) Towards COVID-19 Among International Students in China

“…Throughout their academic studies, scholars have laid emphasis on the fact that knowledge is exceedingly important as it has a direct bearing on the attitude that people form towards something. 6,31,35 The findings of the study corroborated the foreboding fact and further found that international students had enough and adequate information which positively increased their good knowledge regarding the causes, spread, and symptoms of COVID-19, with have high scores of up to 98%. However, the results indicated that there was a significant mean score difference between age groups (P<0.01), of which the group of <20 years had lower mean scores as compared to other groups, and major of study (P=0.015), where those in engineering majors and other studies had lower mean scores as compared to medical and agriculture majors.…”

“…As a results this research is in agreement with other studies that found that a lot of people practice good preventive and control practices given by their authorities. 22,31,41 Furthermore, this study found that there was a positive correlation between attitude and adherence to preventative practices against COVID-19, which indicated that if people possessed good attitudes towards pandemics like COVID-19 they were more likely to conform to all the preventive measures against COVID-19. However, there was no significant relationship between knowledge and attitude and practices, which differs with other studies which were conducted on the same topic and other topics.…”

“…However, we cannot conclude that there is a growing participation of males in social science studies with the reason that the presence of male students at the time of the survey was more, as many studies on a similar topic have proved to have more female participation with a huge gap of leading as compared to the one found in our study. 15,[30][31][32][33] Furthermore, it is found that the majority of international students were young, single, and they were doing either medicine or engineering-related programs, something that mainly contributed to their protracted stay of more than 2 years, as many of these courses are up to 5 years before graduating. About studying in China, there are a lot of reasons behind the attraction of the two aforementioned courses, the main of which was that many Chinese universities are highly equipped with the state of the art technologies aptly positioned to provide the best training in the medical and engineering courses and also the affordability of academic expenses in China as compared to other countries.…”

“…However, there was no significant relationship between knowledge and attitude and practices, which differs with other studies which were conducted on the same topic and other topics. 6,31 These differences could have arisen due to other limitations that the study had undergone.…”

<p>Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, and Associated Factors Regarding the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic</p>

“…The continuous rise in the number of cases and the overall good knowledge, attitude, and practice justify a further investigation to determine the effectiveness of the measures put in place to control the spread of this disease. 11 Understanding the public attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors is important and significant during this pandemic situation. Encouraging the public for these behaviors suggests a chance to normalize safe practices and promote a continued use of these and other recommended personal protective behaviors to reduce the further spread of COVID-19.…”