High school students show some reluctance to COVID-19 guidelines

Abstract

With the emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the general population followed the COVID-19 guidelines to safeguard themselves against the virus. Over time, even after COVID-19 has been officially downgraded from the status of a health emergency, people still followed the COVID-19 guidelines to some extent. However, are they keeping themselves ready and looking for cues to protect themselves from the next pandemic? In this research we hypothesized that high school students are still following the COVID-19 guidelines even after COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency regardless of their gender or geographic location. We surveyed high school students in Punjab, Pakistan, and Santa Clara County, California, USA. The survey results showed that the students had adequate knowledge of how COVID-19 spread and the protection measures against the virus. More males than females considered getting COVID not a significant health concern. We reported that 40.7–55.9% of the students had reverted to their pre-pandemic hand hygiene practice and that there was resistance to wear masks even in cases where there was contact with sick people. The percentage of students who mentioned that they don’t wear masks anymore was 28.1–36.1%. The survey showed that 30.6% of the Punjab students are using less alcohol based sanitizers now than their use before the start of the COVID-19 emergency but that percentage was only 8.5% in the US survey. We observed that a notable number of students were suffering from pandemic fatigue and, thus, had stopped following COVID-19 protection measures or built their own beliefs on how to deal with the pandemic. These findings suggest that we will face a resistance in following protection measures if we face a new pandemic or even another serious wave of this pandemic.