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Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration

BACKGROUND: Individual perceptions of personal and national threats posed by COVID-19 shaped initial response to the pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in residents’ awareness about COVID-19 and to characterize those who were more aware and responsive during the early sta...

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Autores principales: Li, Ran, Yang, Bingcheng, Penn, Jerrod, Houghtaling, Bailey, Chen, Juan, Prinyawiwatkul, Witoon, Roe, Brian E., Qi, Danyi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7750394/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33349247
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-10035-6
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author Li, Ran
Yang, Bingcheng
Penn, Jerrod
Houghtaling, Bailey
Chen, Juan
Prinyawiwatkul, Witoon
Roe, Brian E.
Qi, Danyi
author_facet Li, Ran
Yang, Bingcheng
Penn, Jerrod
Houghtaling, Bailey
Chen, Juan
Prinyawiwatkul, Witoon
Roe, Brian E.
Qi, Danyi
author_sort Li, Ran
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Individual perceptions of personal and national threats posed by COVID-19 shaped initial response to the pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in residents’ awareness about COVID-19 and to characterize those who were more aware and responsive during the early stages of the pandemic in Louisiana. METHODS: In response to the mounting threat of COVID-19, we added questions to an ongoing food preference study held at Louisiana State University from March 3rd through March 12th, 2020. We asked how likely it was that the spread of the coronavirus will cause a national public health crisis and participants’ level of concern about contracting COVID-19 by attending campus events. We used regression and classification tree analysis to identify correlations between these responses and (a) national and local COVID case counts; (b) personal characteristics and (c) randomly assigned information treatments provided as part of the food preference study. RESULTS: We found participants expressed a higher likelihood of an impending national crisis as the number of national and local confirmed cases increased. However, concerns about contracting COVID-19 by attending campus events rose more slowly in response to the increasing national and local confirmed case count. By the end of this study on March 12th, 2020 although 89% of participants agreed that COVID-19 would likely cause a public health crisis, only 65% of the participants expressed concerns about contracting COVID-19 from event attendance. These participants were significantly more likely to be younger students, in the highest income group, and to have participated in the study by responding to same-day, in-person flyer distribution. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide initial insights about the perceptions of the COVID-19 public health crisis during its early stages in Louisiana. We concluded with suggestions for universities and similar institutions as in-person activities resume in the absence of widespread vaccination. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-020-10035-6.
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spelling pubmed-77503942020-12-21 Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration Li, Ran Yang, Bingcheng Penn, Jerrod Houghtaling, Bailey Chen, Juan Prinyawiwatkul, Witoon Roe, Brian E. Qi, Danyi BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Individual perceptions of personal and national threats posed by COVID-19 shaped initial response to the pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in residents’ awareness about COVID-19 and to characterize those who were more aware and responsive during the early stages of the pandemic in Louisiana. METHODS: In response to the mounting threat of COVID-19, we added questions to an ongoing food preference study held at Louisiana State University from March 3rd through March 12th, 2020. We asked how likely it was that the spread of the coronavirus will cause a national public health crisis and participants’ level of concern about contracting COVID-19 by attending campus events. We used regression and classification tree analysis to identify correlations between these responses and (a) national and local COVID case counts; (b) personal characteristics and (c) randomly assigned information treatments provided as part of the food preference study. RESULTS: We found participants expressed a higher likelihood of an impending national crisis as the number of national and local confirmed cases increased. However, concerns about contracting COVID-19 by attending campus events rose more slowly in response to the increasing national and local confirmed case count. By the end of this study on March 12th, 2020 although 89% of participants agreed that COVID-19 would likely cause a public health crisis, only 65% of the participants expressed concerns about contracting COVID-19 from event attendance. These participants were significantly more likely to be younger students, in the highest income group, and to have participated in the study by responding to same-day, in-person flyer distribution. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide initial insights about the perceptions of the COVID-19 public health crisis during its early stages in Louisiana. We concluded with suggestions for universities and similar institutions as in-person activities resume in the absence of widespread vaccination. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-020-10035-6. BioMed Central 2020-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7750394/ /pubmed/33349247 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-10035-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Li, Ran
Yang, Bingcheng
Penn, Jerrod
Houghtaling, Bailey
Chen, Juan
Prinyawiwatkul, Witoon
Roe, Brian E.
Qi, Danyi
Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration
title Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration
title_full Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration
title_fullStr Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration
title_full_unstemmed Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration
title_short Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration
title_sort perceived vulnerability to covid-19 infection from event attendance: results from louisiana, usa, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7750394/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33349247
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-10035-6
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