Abstract
To assess whether knowledge, attitude, and perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic predicted changes in behaviors among the general Moroccan population, a cross-sectional online survey was conducted between 30 March and 20 April involving a total of 14,157 participants. The statistical analysis of the data included univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis. Our results suggest that less than ten days after the Moroccan government announced “Health state of Emergency” response to the COVID-19 outbreak, public knowledge, attitude and responses to the pandemic were relatively high. More than half the respondents (63.2%) reported that they complied with more than five of nine recommended safety measures, including avoiding going out (93.2%), and frequent handwashing with soap and water (78.2%). Factors associated with an increased likelihood to adopt safety measures included perceptions that COVID-19 was a human health risk, the pandemic will continue for a long time, availability of clear information, and a lack of medicine. The largest predictor of safety behavior change was age; participants older than 55 were more likely to adopt recommended safety behaviors. Although knowledge and perception among the general public was reasonable, more encouragement from government via health education programs is needed to maintain appropriate behaviors.
Highlights
SARS-CoV-2 is the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (COVID-19) that emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China [1] and was declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020 [2]
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that has quantified the impact of knowledge, attitudes and perceptions toward COVID-19 among Moroccan residents
The increase in knowledge and attitude greatly contributes to the control of the pandemic in Morocco
Summary
SARS-CoV-2 is the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (COVID-19) that emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China [1] and was declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020 [2]. COVID-19 caused a global pandemic, with 78 million confirmed cases in more than 216 countries by 25 December 2020; there have been 655,041 confirmed deaths across the globe, as reported by WHO [2]. Morocco saw an increase from 1 case on 2 March to 425,864 on 25 December and 7130 deaths [3]. During the early stages of the spread of the pandemic strain of COVID-19, the Moroccan government implemented several mitigation measures to prevent the person-to-person spread of the disease. One of the most common interventions in the early weeks of the pandemic was a non-pharmaceutical
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