Abstract
While the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic wreaked havoc across the globe, we have witnessed substantial mis- and disinformation regarding various aspects of the disease. We conducted a cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire for the general public (recruited via social media) and healthcare workers (recruited via email) from the State of Qatar, and the Middle East and North Africa region to understand the knowledge of and anxiety levels around COVID-19 (April–June 2020) during the early stage of the pandemic. The final dataset used for the analysis comprised of 1658 questionnaires (53.0% of 3129 received questionnaires; 1337 [80.6%] from the general public survey and 321 [19.4%] from the healthcare survey). Knowledge about COVID-19 was significantly different across the two survey populations, with a much higher proportion of healthcare workers possessing better COVID-19 knowledge than the general public (62.9% vs. 30.0%, p < 0.0001). A reverse effect was observed for anxiety, with a higher proportion of very anxious (or really frightened) respondents among the general public compared to healthcare workers (27.5% vs. 11.5%, p < 0.0001). A higher proportion of the general public tended to overestimate their chance of dying if they become ill with COVID-19, with 251 (18.7%) reporting the chance of dying (once COVID-19 positive) to be ≥25% versus 19 (5.9%) of healthcare workers (p < 0.0001). Good knowledge about COVID-19 was associated with low levels of anxiety. Panic and unfounded anxiety, as well as casual and carefree attitudes, can propel risk taking and mistake-making, thereby increasing vulnerability. It is important that governments, public health agencies, healthcare workers, and civil society organizations keep themselves updated regarding scientific developments and that they relay messages to the community in an honest, transparent, unbiased, and timely manner.
Highlights
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe and caused tremendous suffering and loss of human life
Questionnaires from respondents who reported that they had not heard about the coronavirus/COVID-19 disease outbreak
295 (9.4%) poorly completed questionnaires with 10 or more missing answers and 285 (9.1%) social media questionnaires from people living outside the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region or with missing information about their country of residence were excluded
Summary
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe and caused tremendous suffering and loss of human life. Countries around the world have responded by implementing public health measures (e.g., movement restrictions, lockdowns, facemask use, regular hand washing) to limit the virus’ spread. Despite these measures, several countries have struggled to contain the virus’ spread [1,2].
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