Knowledge, attitude, practice, and fear level of Bangladeshi students toward Covid-19 after a year of the pandemic situation: A web-based cross-sectional study

INTRODUCTION: In the earlier phase of the pandemic situation, the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) badly suffered to adhere their people to preventive measures probably due to less knowledge and attitude toward Covid-19. To tackle the second wave of coronavirus, the GoB has again enforced an array of preventive measures, but still encountering the same problem after a year of the pandemic situation. As an attempt to find out the reasons behind this, our study aimed to assess the present knowledge and fear level regarding Covid-19, and attitude and practice of students toward Covid-19 preventive measures (CPM). METHODS: A cross-sectional study was designed and conducted from 15(th) to 25(th) April 2021. A total of 382 participants met all the inclusion criteria and were considered for performing all the statistical analyses (Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis H test, Multiple logistic regression, Spearman rank-order correlation). RESULTS: All the participants were students aged 16 to 30 years. 84.8%, and 22.3% of participants had respectively more accurate knowledge, and moderate to high fear level regarding Covid-19. And, 66%, and 55% of participants had more positive attitude, and more frequent practice toward CPM, respectively. Knowledge, attitude, practice, and fear were interrelated directly or indirectly. It was found knowledgeable participants were more likely to have more positive attitude (AOR = 2.34, 95% CI = 1.23–4.47, P < 0.01) and very little fear (AOR = 2.17, 95% CI = 1.10–4.26, P < 0.05). More positive attitude was found as a good predictor of more frequent practice (AOR = 4.00, 95% CI = 2.44–6.56, P < 0.001), and very less fear had negative impact on both attitude (AOR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.23–0.84, P < 0.01) and practice (AOR = 0.47, 95% CI = 0.26–0.84, P < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The findings reflect that students had appreciable knowledge and very little fear, but disappointedly had average attitude and practice toward Covid-19 prevention. In addition, students lacked confidence that Bangladesh would win the battle against Covid-19. Thus, based on our study findings we recommend that policymakers should be more focused to scale up students’ confidence and attitude toward CPM by developing and implementing well-conceived plan of actions besides insisting them to practice CPM.