Knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) towards COVID-19: A Cross-sectional Online Survey among residence of Nagaland and neighboring states.

Abstract

Abstract

The Novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (abbreviated “COVID19”) suddenly appeared  pandemic which jeopardized global health worldwide and for which no country was prepared to face leading to social emergency that requires unprecedented measures to control the rapid spread of the pandemic. Along with globe, Indian residents' happened to face similar unprecedented situation arise due to the pandemic. Since there is no available vaccine or definite medicine for the pandemic, adherence to control measures is only the present solution to avoid the mass spread.  The adherence to control measures is affected by the residents Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) towards the disease, therefore. This study was conducted to investigate Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices  towards COVID-19 among residents of state of Nagaland and neighboring states of North-East of India during the pandemic period in the month of May, 2020 through a online survey of 1756 respondent.

The aim of this study is to assess the KAP of COVID-19 pandemic among the residents of state of Nagaland and neighboring states of North-East of India on demographic variables viz. gender, age, marital status, education, occupation, religion, and place of stay. Methods of the study adopted is cross-sectional online survey on KAP.  The collected simple descriptive description was made of complex multivariate analyzes using SPSS 17.

Of total 1756 participants, 1176 (76.02%) respondent from the state of Nagaland and remaining 371(23.98%) from the neighboring states of North-East of India has participated in the online survey. Across gender, married women of 532 (38.78%) reflects highest knowledge Mean score.  Among those it reflects maximum correlation between Bachelor’s degree vs. Master’s degree and least correlation between Nagaland vs. Other State.  The majority 1137 (64.73%) of the respondents agreed that COVID-19 will finally be successfully controlled.

The attitude between agreeing and disagreeing in the final success in controlling COVID-19 are significantly different between Married vs. Unmarried and Christian vs. Other religion. The majority of the respondents 1638 (93.30%) are not in the favor of going to a crowded place and majority of the respondent 1623 (92.45%) express willing towards putting a mask while going out in recent days. There is no evidence of significant difference found across the all demographic variables going to the crowded places. Whereas, putting a mask while going out of home between Female vs. Male, Bachelor’s degree vs. Master’s degree and above, and Town vs. Village found to be statistically significant.  

Findings suggest that Nagaland, including the neighboring states of Nagaland residents of relatively high socioeconomic status, particularly women, have had good knowledge, optimistic attitudes, and appropriate practices towards COVID-19. Health education programs aimed at improving knowledge of COVID-19 are useful in fostering optimistic attitudes and maintaining safe practices among certain demographic groups like students, unemployed, unmarried, and marginally educated individual of the society. Need to prepare for removing social dogmas from the remote village population through local village councils. Every single case needs to be treated with SOP.