Abstract
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination together with good compliance with personal preventive measures may help eradicate the ongoing pandemic. This observational prospective cohort study investigated the changes in compliance with personal preventive measures, depressive symptoms, and sleep quality among factory workers within a 3-month follow-up period. A total of 663 workers were recruited by a stratified multi-stage cluster sampling in March 2020, and all of them completed a follow-up survey three months later. Multilevel logistic and linear regression models (level 1: factories; level 2: individual participants) were fitted. A significant decline was observed in consistent facemask wearing in workplace (from 98.0 to 90.3%, P < 0.001) and in other public spaces (from 97.1 to 94.4%, P = 0.02), sanitizing hands (from 70.9 to 48.0%, P < 0.001), household disinfection (from 47.7 to 37.9%, P < 0.001) and probable depression (from 14.9 to 1.5%, P < 0.001) over the follow-up period. A significant improvement in avoiding crowded places (from 69.8 to 77.4%, P = 0.002) and sleep quality (proportion of participants reporting poor sleep quality dropped from 3.9 to 1.2%, P = 0.002) was also observed. Efforts are needed to maintain compliance with personal preventive measures during the pandemic. Mental health problems were uncommon and likely to be one-off among Chinese factory workers.
Highlights
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic remains out of control
Modeling works showed that a decline in compliance with facemask wearing or physical distancing might result in new waves of COVID-19 outbreak in China [14]
We investigated the correlations between baseline characteristics and compliance with personal preventive measures and mental health outcomes at Month 3
Summary
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic remains out of control. Factory workers is a sub-population of higher risk at COVID-19 infection than that of the general population, as many factories are crowded settings and it is hard for them to maintain physical distancing [1]. Use of facemask [7], hand hygiene [8], and physical distancing (e.g., avoiding social/meal gathering and avoiding crowded places) [9] are strongly advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and have been implemented worldwide [10, 11]. The effectiveness of these personal preventive measures crucially relied on compliance by the public [12]. Cross-sectional studies showed good compliance with personal preventive measures at the early phase of COVID-19 outbreak among Chinese factory workers [1, 13]. Modeling works showed that a decline in compliance with facemask wearing or physical distancing might result in new waves of COVID-19 outbreak in China [14]. New waves of COVID-19 community outbreaks occurred in some Chinese cities since June 2020 (e.g., Beijing, Hong Kong, Urumqi, and Dalian) [15, 16]
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