Awareness Related To The Spread Of Covid-19 To Children - A Cross-Sectional Survey

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Covid-19 (coronavirus) has been identified as the cause of an outbreak of the respiratory disease in Wuhan, China;  declared as a global health emergency on January 20, 2020.  Symptoms of covid include cough, fever, tiredness, sore throat etc. Children below the age of 1 are at a high risk of infection due to less maturity of the immune response.

AIM: To create awareness among parents related to the risk of exposure of their children to Covid-19.

 MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 100 parents of school-going children with different cultural backgrounds. A pre-validated and reliable questionnaire containing 10 questions was distributed to the participants. The questionnaire contained the question items pertaining to their knowledge and awareness related to the risk of exposure of their children to Covid-19 . Parents who had more than 1 child were excluded from the study. Statistical analysis was performed in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 23.0 (IBM, Chicago, USA). Descriptive statistics were performed to present the frequency distribution of the options of the question items. Also, Pearson’s chi-square association was done to analyze the knowledge and perception of participants.

RESULTS: From the present study it was assessed that children from cities are more healthy(25.71%) and are aware of covid and its consequences than children in towns and villages (28.57%). Most of the children follow safety measures such as wearing masks, using hand sanitizer, maintaining social distance, etc while playing outdoors/ in public places.

CONCLUSION: By creating awareness among parents about covid and its consequences we can reduce the fatality rate of newborns or children with weak immunity. By this study we emphasize the importance of hygienic practices that are supposed to be followed during Covid to ensure a healthy life.