Chakrawarty Avinash, Ranjan Piyush, Thrinath Arnav, Aggarwal Eishvauk, Isaac Joshua A, Berry Parul, Baitha Upendra, Upadhyay Ashish D, Chowdhury Souradeep, Kumar Arvind
Geriatric Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, IND.
Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, IND.
Cureus. 2020 Oct 31;12(10):e11274. doi: 10.7759/cureus.11274.
Objectives COVID-19 has infected millions of people across the globe, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Currently, there are no vaccines available for COVID-19, and the most effective way to curb its spread is to follow preventive practices. The present study aimed to assess the extent of adoption of preventive practices among the general population in India. Methods A web-based cross-sectional survey was carried out recruiting 964 participants from all over India through purposive sampling. A pre-validated questionnaire consisting of 37 questions was used to collect data. Items 1A to 18A covered various preventive practices and items 1B to 19B covered reasons for not following those preventive practices. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, t-tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted. Results Most participants reported taking precautions such as wearing masks (91.80%), covering both nose and mouth (79.14%) and avoiding hand shaking (83.40%). However, practices like following social distancing in public places (51.76%) and workplace (51.04%), frequent hand washing/sanitising (63.59%) and washing hands for at least 20 seconds (45.44%) were less commonly observed. Participants failed to follow social distancing because of overcrowding and lack of space. They also found it cumbersome to wash hands multiple times. Female participants and people residing in metropolitan and small cities were fairly doing well in following preventive practices. Conclusion The study helped in identifying the glitches in following various preventive practices against COVID-19 during unlock phase and reasons for the failure to perform these practices.
目标 新冠病毒已感染全球数百万人，导致数十万人死亡。目前，尚无针对新冠病毒的疫苗，遏制其传播的最有效方法是遵循预防措施。本研究旨在评估印度普通人群中预防措施的采用程度。方法 通过立意抽样，在印度各地招募964名参与者，开展了一项基于网络的横断面调查。使用一份由37个问题组成的经过预验证的问卷来收集数据。第1A至18A项涵盖各种预防措施，第1B至19B项涵盖不遵循这些预防措施的原因。进行了描述性统计、卡方检验、t检验和单因素方差分析（ANOVA）。结果 大多数参与者报告采取了预防措施，如戴口罩（91.80%）、捂住口鼻（79.14%）和避免握手（83.40%）。然而，在公共场所（51.76%）和工作场所（51.04%）遵循社交距离、频繁洗手/消毒（63.59%）以及洗手至少20秒（45.44%）等措施的实施情况较少见。参与者因过度拥挤和空间不足而未能遵循社交距离。他们还发现多次洗手很麻烦。女性参与者以及居住在大城市和小城市的人在遵循预防措施方面做得相当不错。结论 该研究有助于找出解封阶段在遵循各种针对新冠病毒的预防措施方面存在的问题以及未能实施这些措施的原因。
