Awareness, perception, and mitigating measures on COVID-19: Do we still need to educate our masses on COVID-19?

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 was declared an emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization in 2020. This study assesses patients' awareness, perception, and mitigating measures taken during the COVID-19 outbreak visiting an apex tertiary health-care center in North India. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted between September 15, 2020, and November 15, 2020, in a tertiary care public hospital, North India, using a structured self-administered questionnaire. The survey included 809 patients using a consecutive sampling strategy. The self-structured and prevalidated questionnaire was used to collect information on study variables. Chi-square test and independent samples t-test, followed by binary and multivariate logistic regression, was used to determine the factors associated with awareness toward COVID-19. RESULTS: The mean age of participants was 32.41 (±11.24) years. Multivariate logistic regression shows that married participants (OR: 0.660, 95 % CI: 0.440-0.989, P= 0.044), reading books/magazine or attended institutional lectures (OR: 2.241, 95% CI: 1.545–3.249, P = 0.001), and watching television and radio (OR: 1.824, 95% CI: 1.283–2.592, P = 0.001) are significantly more aware than their counterparts. Participants with higher income group (>20,000 Indian rupee) significantly had higher awareness than participants having salary <10,000 rupees (OR: 0.280, 95% CI: 0.178–0.440, P = 0.001) or 10,001–20,000 rupees (OR: 0.481, 95% CI: 0.297–0.777, P = 0.003). Patients avoiding traveling across or abroad had significantly much reasonably good awareness than their counterparts (OR: 0.357, 95% CI: 0.139–0.918, P = 0.033). CONCLUSIONS: Participants demonstrated good awareness, encouraging perception, and complied with appropriate mitigating measures during the outbreak. Considering frequent waves and the pandemic's long duration, consistent reinforcement of government measures, including masks, maintaining social distance, and frequent handwashing, is much needed.