Abstract
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak is spreading globally. Although COVID-19 has now been declared a pandemic and risk for infection in the United States (US) is currently high, at the time of survey administration the risk of infection in the US was low. It is important to understand the public perception of risk and trust in sources of information to better inform public health messaging. In this study, we surveyed the adult US population to understand their risk perceptions about the COVID-19 outbreak. We used an online platform to survey 718 adults in the US in early February 2020 using a questionnaire that we developed. Our sample was fairly similar to the general adult US population in terms of age, gender, race, ethnicity and education. We found that 69% of the respondents wanted the scientific/public health leadership (either the CDC Director or NIH Director) to lead the US response to COVID-19 outbreak as compared to 14% who wanted the political leadership (either the president or Congress) to lead the response. Risk perception was low (median score of 5 out of 10) with the respondents trusting health professionals and health officials for information on COVID-19. The majority of respondents were in favor of strict infection prevention policies to control the outbreak. Given our results, the public health/scientific leadership should be at the forefront of the COVID-19 response to promote trust.
Highlights
The current novel coronavirus outbreak, COVID-19, has spread across the globe with hundreds of thousands infected and thousands of deaths. [1] At the time of this writing (March 25, 2020), there are over 54,000 cases of COVID-19 in the United States (US) with 737 deaths. [2] With COVID19 declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, [3] it is important to understand risk perceptions about COVID-19 and trust in political and public health/scientific leadership among the US population to better inform messaging and policies. [4]
[1] At the time of this writing (March 25, 2020), there are over 54,000 cases of COVID-19 in the US with 737 deaths
Participants completed the perceived risk scale (Cronbach’s α = 0.71) which had 10 survey-items (5-point Likert Scale: 0 = strongly disagree/disagree/neutral; 1 = agree/strongly agree). We asked about their support for restrictive infection prevention policies and the reliability of various sources of information (S1 Survey)
Summary
The current novel coronavirus outbreak, COVID-19, has spread across the globe with hundreds of thousands infected and thousands of deaths. [1] At the time of this writing (March 25, 2020), there are over 54,000 cases of COVID-19 in the US with 737 deaths. [2] With COVID19 now declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, [3] it is important to understand risk perceptions about COVID-19 and trust in political and public health/scientific leadership among the US population to better inform messaging and policies. [4]
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