Risks assessment of Adherence to non-pharmaceutical measures towards COVID-19 among residents of Mashhad in the North-East of Iran during the awful wave of the epidemic

BACKGROUND: Since the Coronavirus disease 19 (Covid-19) rampaged in Iran, three waves of the epidemic occurred. OBJECTIVE: In the present study, two issues are considered. First: What proportion of the people adhere to the mitigation approaches towards the disease? Second: Which are the reasons to disobey these rules? METHODS: A cross-sectional, population-based phone survey was applied among the population aged over 16 years in Mashhad between November 5 and December 1, 2020. A valid and reliable knowledge, attitude, and performance (KAP (designed questionnaire was used and logistic regression was performed with STATA 14. RESULTS: The final sample size was 776; 90.59, 89.8 and 48.1% of the participants had sufficient reliable knowledge, attitude, and practice, respectively; 20.1% of the participants did not wear masks; nearly half of them visited traditional healers for the prevention and cure; 97.8% of them believed the efficiency of the vaccine and stated that they will consume it if it is distributed. Among the sociodemographic factors, only the unemployed had low adherence to the preventive approach; 51.7% of the main worry was the weak economic situation and 69% of jobs and expenditures were poorly affected. The odds ratio (OR) for optimising attitude reduced from 4.64 to 3.22, and for good performance from 5.64 to 5.43 after adjusting for the economic, knowledge and perception factors. CONCLUSION: Despite all the health rules and probably COVID-19 vaccines global access (COVAX), it seems that the most effective way to reverse this horrific wave and its economic consequences is the improvement of the economy and livelihood of the society.