Abstract
Background: The World Health Organization declared the rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world to be a global public health emergency. The spread of the disease is influenced by people’s willingness to adopt preventative public health behaviours, such as participation in testing programmes and risk perception can be an important determinant of engagement in such behaviours. Methods: In this study, we present the first assessment of how the UK public (N=778) perceive the usefulness of testing for coronavirus and the factors that influence a person’s willingness to test for coronavirus.Findings: None of the key demographic characteristics (age, gender, education, disability, vulnerability status, or professional expertise) were significantly related to the respondents’ willingness to be tested for coronavirus. However, closely following the news media was positively related to willingness to be tested. Knowledge and perceptions about Coronavirus significantly predicted willingness to test, with three significantly contributing factors: worry about the health and social impacts to self and family; personal susceptibility; and concerns about the impacts of coronavirus on specific demographic groups. Views on testing for coronavirus predicted willingness to test, with the most influential factors being importance of testing by need; negative views about widespread testing and mistrust in doctor’s advice about testing. Interpretation: Implications for effective risk communication and localised public health approach to encouraging public to put themselves forward for testing are discussed. We strongly advocate for effective communications and localised intervention by public health authorities, using media outlets to ensure that members of the public get tested for SARs-CoV2 when required.Funding Statement: None.Declaration of Interests:The authors report no conflicts of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: The study received a favourable ethical opinion from the Kingston University Research Ethics Committee.
Highlights
The World Health Organization declared the rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world to be a global public health emergency
We strongly advocate for effective communications and localised intervention by public health authorities, using media outlets to ensure that members of the public get tested for SARs-CoV2 when required
Other reports identified additional symptoms such as myalgia, fatigue and sore throat.[4]. These symptoms remain sentinel clinical markers for COVID-19 infection; more recently, anosmia and ageusia were identified as notable symptoms.[5,6], and the UK government included them as part of the case description for COVID-19.7 noted were characteristics that appear to increase the risk of infection: men appear to be at greater risk than women to the infection,[8] there is mounting evidence that certain ethnic minority groups are at higher risk
Summary
The World Health Organization declared the rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world to be a global public health emergency. The disease has subsequently spread globally and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). Global infections reached 8,373,746 cases and 449,512 deaths as of 18th June 2020.2 The disease symptoms were first fully described by Huang et al.[3], a study of 41 patients which revealed the common, initial clinical features to be fever (98%) and cough 76%); 55% of patients reported dyspnea. Patients below the age of 9 years have a death rate of circa 0.0016%, but the mortality rate increases to around 7.8% in infected people aged 80 years or over.[4,15] Around 20% of infected patients older than 80 years require hospitalisation, whereas patients below 30 years of age represent only around 1% of admissions (reported by Verity et al.,[4] and reviewed by Mahase, 2020.15)
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