Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Towards COVID-19 among General Public of Islamabad, Pakistan

Abstract

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on the 11th of March 2020 and Pakistan imposed health emergency on 25 March. Then strict control measures were taken to control the COVID-19 outbreak. For this purpose, the study carried out to analyze the Knowledge, attitude and practice of general public towards coronavirus outbreak. The aim of the study is to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice among general public during Novel Coronavirus 2019 outbreak. The aim of the current cross-sectional study is to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice among general public. A cross-sectional study was conducted from 7th April to 10th April 2020 by using an online structured questionnaire involving 290 participants by a systematic random sampling. Descriptive analysis is performed on the data to illustrate the mean knowledge, practice and attitude of participants. A positive response of knowledge 82%, attitude 76% and practice 86% was highly satisfied among participants. The knowledge about the symptoms of COVID-19 was observed in more than 80% of the participants. About 85% participants have a practice of wearing masks and 99.9% were habitual of hand washing as preventive measure. Only 8 % of participants were visiting crowded places and 4 % of them were using public transport. Thus, there is a need for more detailed and directed measures and awareness campaigns to improve the knowledge, attitude and practice in some critical aspects to contain the virus. The present study during the COVID-19 shows an enhanced knowledge and effective practice and high attitude towards COVID-19 among the participants. This study brings a new potential for in depth survey and aimed approaches to develop strategies to counter COVID-19 attack.