Original Research Article
Year: 2020 | Month: August | Volume: 10 | Issue: 8 | Pages: 42-48
Awareness, Perception and Safety Practices about COVID-19 in School Children of 6-16 Years using COVID-19 Quiz
Atiya A Shaikh, Apoorva Likhite
Assistant Professor, DES Brijlal Jindal College of Physiotherapy, Pune
Corresponding Author: Apoorva Likhite
ABSTRACT
Background and need of study- It’s important to know current level of knowledge, perception and practices about COVID-19 of children for their safety when left on their own in community. Knowing this would help the policy makers, parent and teachers to decide the appropriate ways and content that needs to be explained to them in order to ensure the appropriate steps are taken by children to protect themselves when not supervised.
Objective- To find level of knowledge (spread, symptom) , perception about the disease and its outcome, and practice of safety precautions about COVID-19 by school going children of age 6 yrs-16 yrs using a questionnaire in Quiz format as per score of the quiz
Method- A survey in the form of Quiz was devised and circulated on school groups and social media. Willing parents were asked to get it filled from their children. Total 786 responses were obtained in months’ time (15 May-15 June 2020). Collected data was analysed using descriptive statistics.
Results- Average score of the participants was 42/58 i.e. good awareness. 92.98% and 94.39% participants gave right answer about spread of disease being thru touching infected surfaces and social gatherings respectively.93.49% and 95.03% children responded as fever and cough /sore throat to be the symptoms respectively. Only 57.58 thought it to be loss of smell too. More than 95% of participants were right about preventive measures to be avoiding gatherings, following 6 ft distance, frequent hand washing, mask and sanitizer use. More than 85% of children knew about following safety precautions if someone is sick in house.88.20% children said they got most of this information from social media/TV.
Conclusion- Overall there seems to be good level of awareness in children about COVID-19 symptoms; precautions.TV social media seems to be a good source to spread more awareness and information in this group.
Key words: COVID-19, Children, Safety precautions, Awareness, Spread