Assessment of Preventive Practices Followed by General Public During COVID-19 Pandemic - A Cross-Sectional Survey From India

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.