COVID-19 Pandemic Social Distancing General Practices

Abstract

Introduction: COVID 19 is the first pandemic events that happen in Oman which requires all residents and nationals to practice quarantine and social distancing, there could be certain issues related to culture values and community that affect the practice of these measures. Therefore, this study is going to explore the public knowledge, practices and believes about the quarantine and social distancing in pandemic event. We hypothesized that there are certain values that affect the practice of social distancing during the COVID 19 pandemic.Methods: This cross-sectional study targeted the population of Oman (including citizens and residents) and was carried out during COVID-19 pandemic from 11th August 2020 to 7th September 2020. All those who were able to read and write were included in the study. Survey included close and open-ended questions. In the first section of the questionnaire, participants were asked to specify demographical details including age, marital status, living with high-risk groups, health status, job status and income in order to correlate the practice of social distancing along with the demographical data. The second section of the questionnaire included details regarding the knowledge, believe and the impact of social distancing, and readiness to change social life and comply with the social distancing.Results: 943 respondents, majority of them reported that they are ready /ready to a great extent to practice social distancing (61.9%) compared to 34.9% reported that they are not sure/ready to some extent and only 3.2% were not ready at all to practice social distancing. Financial factors, religious and culture norms had the strongest negative impact. While level of responsibility, governmental legislations, and fear of getting or transmitting the infection had the strongest positive impact to practice social distancing among all the respondents. Male reported more financial and religious negative impact with p-value 0.002 and 0.001, respectively. And female reported more positive impact of family and friends support and legislation with p-value 0.046 and 0.008, respectively.Conclusions: This cross-sectional study conducted in the middle of COVID-19 era highlighted the readiness of population to practice the social distancing, their knowledge of social distancing, and the impact of social distancing on different life factors. Religious practices mainly negatively affected the male gender. Culture and norms derive the human behavior within communities and may affect the safety measures during outbreak or pandemic. Hence, even with availability of vaccination, campaigns on public health should be the national practice to continue emphasizing compassionate attitudes towards social distancing.Funding: None to declareDeclaration of Interests: None to declare.Ethics Approval Statement: Ethical approval for the study was obtained from scientific research committee at Royal Hospital, MOH, with approval number SRC#65/2020 prior start of the study.