Socio-economic predictors of public understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic

Md Rifat Hossain,Salit Chakma,Farah Tasnim,Zuairia Zahra

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07255

Md Rifat Hossain, Salit Chakma + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07255

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Journal: Heliyon	Publication Date: Jun 1, 2021
Citations: 5	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Bangladesh University of Professionals

Abstract

The COVID-19 (Coronavirus 2019) pandemic has proven to be the biggest global shock since World War II. That war resulted in 5.5 million deaths. The number of COVID-19-infected persons exceeded 13 million in the first 6 months of the pandemic and many more asymptomatic cases are undocumented. The global economy has been affected severely. The tension, the fear, the drastic measures to try to control the spread of the disease disrupted everyone's life from child to senior. The condition is worse in the global south, such as in Bangladesh, where the average population density is 7.5 times higher than that of China, where COVID-19 began and spread uncontrollably at the end of 2019. Lockdowns and social distancing were tried to stop the transmission of the disease but were often not observed faithfully or were less effective than thought to be. People need to trade and interact to earn money to survive but these activities could endanger others' lives if they do not maintain safety measures. Individual awareness is not only curtailing the spread of COVID-19 but also saves others' lives. This cross-sectional study used Ordinal and Binary logit models to predict the level of awareness through potential regressors of the citizen toward COVID-19 in Bangladesh. Findings of the study are that the level of awareness is dependent on the level of trauma; also, that household income is a statistically-significant predictor of awareness. Behavioral activities such as use of masks, outdoor activities, and stockpiling tendencies are found to be statistically significant predictors of awareness as well.

Highlights

The COVID-19 virus is an unfamiliar and advanced strain of coronavirus (CoV), identified by Chinese scientists on January 09, 2020
This research was about two basic questions about COVID-19 - (i) what is the role of socioeconomic factors in creating public awareness? (ii) what are the socioeconomic factors that can explain the level of public awareness at any point in time? In the process of investigating these questions, we discover the socio-economic factors influencing public awareness; we propose a solution by emphasis on certain socio-economic factors to increase public awareness in order to control the transmission of the coronavirus disease
Social awareness is very important during a pandemic

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 virus is an unfamiliar and advanced strain of coronavirus (CoV), identified by Chinese scientists on January 09, 2020. By April 2020, this coronavirus had given rise to a global pandemic (Dryhurst et al, 2020). Coronavirus induces illnesses ranging from common cold to acute respiratory diseases similar to previous epidemics, such as, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) (Shaw et al 2020). The COVID-19 coronavirus is the third new pathogen to appear in the last two decades (Al-Hazmi 2016). Coronavirus is transmitted from person to person through small droplets produced while coughing, sneezing, talking, and even by touching contaminated surfaces. The contamination rate is very high, the mortality rate is only 2.3% much less than that of Ebola or SARS (Qazi et al, 2020; Zhong et al, 2020)

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