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Knowledge and public health practices during lockdown towards COVID-19 in Bangladesh

Received Jun 8, 2021 Revised Aug 18, 2021 Accepted Aug 25, 2021 The study aimed to assess the role of having knowledge and essential hygiene practices to prevent coronavirus pandemic and to find out the relationship between people’s knowledge and good hygiene practices with socio-demographic variables during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic situation. In this study, data were collected from 248 respondents for cross-sectional study using voluntary response sampling from April, 3


INTRODUCTION
Being a developing country, the health system of Bangladesh is not good enough to tackle coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) pandemic. In this situation awareness, keeping good knowledge and safety health practices are the only way to survive. In China, the confirmed cases of coronavirus were first found in 2019 [1], [2] and the case related death was reported in 2020 [3]. A few weeks later, coronavirus infection spread over the globe in rapidly [4]. The disease was announced as global concern of health emergency on 30 January, 2020 [5]. World Health Organization (WHO) declared a new disease called as COVID-19 on 11 February 2020 [6], which was later declared as global pandemic [7], [8] when about 114 countries and areas were affected by this disease [9], [10].
The world people were initiated awareness of healthcare for the country peoples towards coronavirus due to similarity with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus [8]. In general people of

Awareness and hygiene practices about preventive measures
The majority with 86.29% respondents had heard about the disease. On the other hands, only 5.24% of respondents had known about two weeks of quarantine period and 6.85% had no idea about quarantine period. This indicates that there is a lack of quarantine knowledge among the Bangladeshi people compared with the Jordanian population [28]. The practices for using mask and maintained handkerchief or tissue or elbow when sneezing/cough was found among 87.50% of all respondents. In addition, almost 87% respondents had maintained social distance or avoided social ceremony and 82.66% respondent's children were abandoned to go out for outdoor activities during lockdown. Moreover, more than 71% of the respondents had awareness about stay at home for preventing coronavirus disease but 22.98% were confused about these preventive measures. Only 5.65% responded that stay at home policy cannot control coronavirus disease. Percentage distribution of awareness and hygiene practices were presented in Table 2.   Table 3 indicates that the respondents who were higher educated and involved in service were significantly associated with good knowledge practices towards COVID-19. Moreover, respondents were of 26-35 years' age group had significant general knowledge (p<0.05). On the other hand, respondents who were above 60 years old and non-educated had poor knowledge about prevention of hygiene practices. However, our study shown more than 52% respondents who were from Dhaka division of Bangladesh had good general knowledge on maintaining safety practices. Previous studies also found that increasing level of educational qualification and middle age of the people has more knowledge on the coronavirus transmission and prevention measures [19], [20]. In this COVID-19 condition, people with higher degrees or education are more likely to have greater knowledge and preventive behaviour [19 ], [20], which is consistent with the current findings. However, the current study found that having more knowledge about COVID-19 increased the number of COVID-19 preventive activities.

Devices at home and sources of collecting information about COVID-19
Maximum respondents (48.79%) had got the information about coronavirus from internet. However, about 43% respondents had accessed to television, 8.065% and 0.4032% of the respondents accessed to newspaper and radio respectively at their home as shown in Figure 1. Furthermore, majority of the respondent's (35.89%) received updates from television, 31.85% of the respondent's sources were YouTube and Facebook, 23.39% respondents used mobile to talk with their relevant sources for knowing coronavirus information and some of them used newspaper for updated information as shown in Figure 2. One study in Satkhira district found that social and mass media were the common sources of information and majority of them can get the information from the social media who have access to the internet. Both medium of sources of information can reduces the misinterpretation of the pandemic [29].

Hand washing practices
The highest proportion of respondents who washed their hands 7-10 times on a daily basis was 50.4% followed by 22.58% respondents who washed hands 3-6 times in a day. On the other hand, the lowest proportion of respondents washing their hands 15-20 times in a day was 7.258% while 19.76% respondents only washed their hands 10-15 times in a day as shown in Figure 3. Evidence suggested that the rate of washing hand increased significantly (88.4%) after the coronavirus invasion and on average they wash their hands three times per day [30]- [32]. Some study also found that by using the nationwide representative data, more than ¾ people wash their hand after coming back from outsides [30], [33]. But after sneezing, coughing the rate of washing hand is comparatively low (about 37%) [30].

Maintaining social distance by occupation and staying at home by respondents' age group
The highest proportions of respondents were from service group who maintained social distancing about 48%. Besides this, almost 28% students followed social distancing prevention steps and the lowest proportion of retired respondents kept social distancing only 3% as shown in Figure 4 (a). On the other hand, 26-35 years' age group respondents who stayed at home to control the pandemic situation were higher than other age group of the respondents as shown in Figure 4  Nowadays, COVID-19 is the major concern of health and economic sectors for all over the world. This study was performed to evaluate knowledge and practices in daily life to adapt publicly in the period of global pandemic. The study was aimed to acquire more information on association of knowledge and sociodemographic variables of Bangladeshi population. A similar investigation was conducted previous outbreak during the period of 2014 which showed similarity with COVID-19 [34]. Previous study reported about Ebola outbreak knowledge, attitude, and perception of Ebola virus infection [35]. Having optimistic attitudes and appropriate practices would be surely associated with good knowledge for encouraging and maintaining safe practices regarding COVID-19 outbreak [36].
In the present study, we found that respondents who were higher educated either graduate or post graduate were showed good practices of knowledge to confirm better health prevention measures. Most respondents in our study were involved in the service and 26-35 years' age group had good general knowledge and practiced regarding coronavirus issue. A recent study shown the majority of slum dwellers have inadequate knowledge and poor practices of COVID-19 in Bangladesh [24]. The use of masks, hand washing and social distancing are the effective sets of the preventive measures to stop transmission of coronavirus from people to people [37], which support our present findings. In case of Indian population, one study showed that about 85% respondents practiced hand washing procedures, 37% agreed for using masks to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 [11]. Another researcher also stated about 95% respondents have maintained safety procedures, washed hand normally, stay at home and keeping physical distance to stop the transmission of coronavirus in Nepal [38]. The WHO also suggested to washing with soap and or alcohol based rub to protect people from coronavirus infection [4]. Another study observed that 89.5% and 53.8% university going students have the practice of washing hands frequently and using face masks properly while going out in public places respectively to avoid coronavirus infection [22]. This results support our present findings. The previous study exposed that gender, age group, marital status, higher education and occupations were positively associated with lower level of knowledge in Chinese residents [36]. Whitelaw et al. [39] reported that people were used to depend on digital machineries for epidemic prevention and reaction, observation, surveillance, interaction, isolation and medical treatment.
Immigrant populations have significantly good knowledge of coronavirus than that of other divisional parts of the country. The People's Republic of Bangladesh has so far acted to raise awareness through news, press release, and social media [40]. But, the government may be unable to control circumstances. So, general public participation, political leader and supporters, industrials, business man, pharmaceutical companies, garment owners, medical practitioner and international supports are required on a quick basis to overcome smoothly [38], [41]- [43]. Therefore, we need to take necessary steps for maintaining knowledge and awareness practices for healthy life during lockdown in Bangladeshi community. Further, sustainable measurement to overcome the COVID-19 difficulties could be build-up by appropriate practices of the residences.

CONCLUSION
This study concluded that the respondents have good manure, positive thinking ability and practices to safe themselves from the COVID-19 outbreak. Higher education has significant association with knowledge and good practices towards COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh. Moreover, most of the higher educated respondents showed positive thoughts and proper health practices. These findings are helpful for the researchers and the population to follow all good promotional practices for preventive measures against coronavirus.