Abstract
To control the ongoing global pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2, we need to influence people’s behavior. To do so, we require information on people’s knowledge and perception of the disease and their opinions about the importance of containment measures. Therefore, in August 2020, we conducted an anonymous cross-sectional online survey on these topics in 913 participants in Germany. Participants completed a questionnaire on various synonyms and symptoms of corona virus and specified the importance they attributed to individual and regulatory measures. The virus was linked more closely with most synonyms and the discovery in China than with the places of the first larger European outbreaks. General (cold-like) symptoms, such as “cough” and “fever,” were more widely known than COVID-19-specific ones, e.g., “loss of taste and smell.” The widely promoted individual measures “distancing,” “hygiene,” and “(facial) mask wearing” were rated as highly important, as were the corresponding official measures, e.g., the “distancing rule” and “mask mandate.” However, the “corona warning app” and a “vaccine mandate” were rated as less important. A subgroup analysis showed broad agreement between the subgroups on nearly all issues. In conclusion, the survey provided information about the German population’s perception and knowledge of the coronavirus five months into the pandemic; however, participants were younger and more educated than a representative sample. To learn from the beginning and still ongoing pandemic and develop concepts for the future, we need more conclusive studies, especially on the acceptance of further specified lockdowns, the population’s willingness to be vaccinated, and the influence of misinformation on public opinion.
Highlights
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a global pandemic [1]
This study examined after five months the extent to which the German population is familiar with the typical symptoms of COVID-19 and the pandemic situation and to assess which individual and official measures they accept and consider to be important to prevent infection or contain the coronavirus pandemic
The percentage of study participants who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 was 0.9%, which was higher than the average of approximately 0.3% of the German population infected at the time of the survey [8,9,20]
Summary
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a global pandemic [1]. At the time of writing this manuscript, the disease is affecting more than 200 countries [2]. The virus was discovered in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 [1,3]. The number of infections and deaths rose sharply, and the number of confirmed cases increased in waves to over 108,006,680 infections and more than 2,378,115 reported deaths from or with COVID-19 globally (status on 14 February 2021) [4,5]. In Germany, the disease started to spread rapidly in the middle of March 2020, and the number of new infections and deaths rose dramatically.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have