Abstract
This cross-sectional study aimed to measure the awareness, and attitude towards COVID-19 disease as well as new vaccine acceptance, among health field community (healthcare workers, health fields teaching staff and students) at the University of Jeddah, Jeddah Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire was designed in English language and included a set of 44 multiple-choice close-ended questions that covered demographic profile of participants, awareness of symptoms and practice against COVID-19. It also included a set of questions that attempted to investigate the attitudes and perceptions towards the uptake of vaccine. Out of the total 186 who participated in this study, 48.4% were 24 years old or younger and 55.9% were health field students. The results showed that majority of participants were aware of most common symptoms and causes of COVID-19 and had positive attitude toward the protective measures against the disease. Regarding the acceptability of vaccination against COVID-19, around 44% of the total participants showed hesitancy to uptake the vaccine of whom, 68.3% were concerned about the adverse effects of the vaccine. Significant differences were found between gender and current position at university of Jeddah in term of vaccine acceptance with p-values of < 0.001. Despite this high level of awareness, health field community at the university of Jeddah have medium acceptance level of disease vaccine. Thus, health educational programs are important to increase the acceptance level among such societies which will contribute to increase the acceptance level among the whole society.
Highlights
The newly discovered Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is one of the deadly infectious diseases that harm world population[1]
Beside the questions about the knowledge of symptoms and practical attitude towards the protective measures, additional questions on perception toward COVID-19 vaccination were driven from vaccine questionnaires that published by World Health Organization (WHO)
Descriptive analysis showed that around 80% of participants were aware about the scientific name of the virus causing COVID-19 and 58% were aware about the source of emergence of the SARS-CoV-2
Summary
The newly discovered Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is one of the deadly infectious diseases that harm world population[1]. This severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus COVID-19’ pandemic has been infecting more than 64 million over 218 countries[2,3]. COVID-19 is considered as a highly infectious disease that induces primary symptoms such as fever, difficulty in breathing, dry coughing, fatigue, headache, and throat congestions[9,10]. The severity of symptoms has shown to be different from person to person and more severe in elderlies, especially those with other chronic health conditions[11]
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