Abstract
This study investigated demographic factors, attitude and knowledge of persons with special needs towards COVID-19 in Nigeria between 12th and 25th May, 2020. This cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 72 persons with special needs purposively selected from the six geo-political zones in Nigeria. A questionnaire comprising questions on demographic information (three), knowledge (24) and attitude (28) towards COVID-19 was completed via Google forms by the participants (r = 0.78). There were more males (51, 70.8%) than females (21, 29.2%) and the most common age group was 34-44 years (37.5%). The number of participants with a hearing impairment was 34 (47.2%) and the number with a visual impairment was 26 (36.1%). The results indicate adequate knowledge about the characteristics of COVID-19. It was found that 98.6% of the participants had heard about COVID-19; 94.4% were aware that COVID-19 is a contagious disease, 91.7% stated that COVID-19 is a virus and 88.9% reported correctly that the incubation period is 3-14 days. The knowledge about symptoms of COVID-19 among participants was high (x = 2.63; participants obtained 87.8% of the total achievable score for these questions). The knowledge about prevention and control of COVID 19 among participants needs was very high (x = 2.77; participants obtained 92.3% of the total achievable score for these questions). Attitude of participants towards the COVID-19 outbreak was positive and above average (x = 2.84). However, participants reported that it is hard to get palliatives or financial and material support from others during COVID-19 lockdown (52.8%) and that they feel frustrated by the uncaring attitude of the government towards them during COVID-19 lockdown (55.6%). On this basis, counselling and social policy implications were suggested including the need for widespread enlightenment on how to reduce hearing and vision impairments in the country.
Highlights
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) belongs to the Coroviridae family and is an RNA virus (Ochei & Kolhatkar, 2017)
Research question 2: What is the level of knowledge about the general characteristics of COVID-19 among persons with special needs? With respect to knowledge about COVID-19 general characteristics among persons with special needs, it is revealed in Table 2 that 98.6% of them have heard about COVID-19; 94.4% are aware that COVID-19 is a contagious disease, 91.7% stated that COVID-19 is a virus and 88.9% reported correctly that the incubation period is 3–14 days
There was a wide variation of responses on what the treatment measures for COVID-19, as 34.7% of the participants stated that symptomatic therapy is the treatment for COVID-19, 13.9% stated that antibiotics are the treatment, while 26.4% and 25% stated that there is no treatment or had no opinion on treatment for COVID-19, respectively
Summary
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) belongs to the Coroviridae family and is an RNA virus (Ochei & Kolhatkar, 2017). COVID-19 is a new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans. It was first discovered in Wuhan city, China in December 2019. It is an infectious disease with symptoms ranging from fever, headache, sore throat, tiredness, dry cough, chest pain, to shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. This disease can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death. As of Wednesday, 3rd June 2020, statistics on COVID-19 showed that there are 6,474,559 confirmed coronavirus cases globally with 3,083,688 (89%) recoveries and discharged cases and 382,921 (11%) fatalities (Coronavirus Worldometer, June 3 2020)
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