Abstract
Introduction
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a highly infectious disease, and its main clinical symptoms include fever, dry cough, fatigue, myalgia, and dyspnea. Understanding community members’ knowledge of COVID-19 transmission, clinical symptoms, and prevention is essential for directing public health interventions to reduce disease spread and improve vaccination coverage. Hence, this study aimed to describe participants’ knowledge related to COVID-19 transmission, clinical symptoms, and prevention across the sociodemographic characteristics of community participants.
Methods
We used secondary data from a Rapid Survey conducted on 7–9 August 2020 by the School of Public Health students. One hundred and two respondents aged 18–58 years were invited to participate in the rapid survey in the Damrey Slab commune, Kampong Svay district, Kampong Thom Province. Face‒to-face interviews use questionnaires to collect information on socio-demographics, knowledge, attitudes, practices, and information related to social dimensions, including community effort and community knowledge effort. Additionally, the leadership of authorities in the context of the COVID-19C was assessed.
Results
Among the study participants, 90.2% were married, and 66.7% were farmers. Close to one-fourth of them reported no education at all. A total of 27.4% had a high level of knowledge of COVID-19 transmission, clinical signs, and prevention. Close to half (48%) of the respondents had a high understanding of prevention, 20.6% had high knowledge of clinical symptoms, and 13% had a high sense of disease transmission. Our results showed that being a housewife (18.8%) had a lower knowledge of COVID-19 prevention compared with professionals (75.0%) or farmers (52.9%) with a P value = 0.033. People with at least primary education (OR = 3.3, 95% CI: 1.2-9.1) or secondary school (OR = 3.4, 95% CI: 1.1-10.8) were more likely to have greater knowledge of COVID-19 prevention than were those with no schooling. However, this study did not find an association between socio-demographics and knowledge of COVID-19 disease transmission, knowledge of COVID-19 clinical symptoms, or COVID-19 prevention.
Conclusion
The overall knowledge of transmission, clinical signs and prevention related to COVID-19 is still limited among this rural community. Additionally, the study revealed that housewives and non-school participants presented significantly lower scores of knowledges related to COVID-19 prevention. The findings could contribute to the design of effective methods for increasing awareness and educational interventions, ultimately enhancing overall preparedness for and response to the re-emerging COVID-19 pandemic in rural communities. Risk communication should focus on improving COVID-19 prevention programs, particularly for housewives and people with no education background.