Public Awareness Towards COVID-19: A Cross Sectional Survey Among Patients of Pakistan Homeopathic Trust Hospital Lahore, Pakistan

Background COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease as it involves upper and lower respiratory tract that can result in complicated pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Clinical presentation of COVID-19 includes dry cough, fever, diarrhoea, vomiting, and myalgia but patients with multiple comorbidities are more prone to severe infections. World health organization on 11 March 2020, declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. Thus, themain purpose of this survey was to evaluate the knowledge, attitude and pratices of people towards this scary virus. Methodology This cross-sectional survey was conducted among the patients of Pakistan Homeopathic Trust Hospital Lahore, Pakistan. A convenient sampling method was used to recruit the study participants. Ethical approval was obtained from the ethical review board. Verbal consent was obtained from each participant prior to their enrollment. A questionnaire was designed based on published literature related to knowledge, attitude, and practice of patients towards COVID-19. Results on was 64% and male were 36%. Only 5.3% of the patients were from rural areas and only 28% patient’s monthly income was less than 20,000. Total, 97.3% of the participants knew about the main clinical symptoms of COVID-19 but 2.6% of the participants had no information. Almost all participants had knowledge about the clinical characteristics of COVID-19. Total 79.33% participants agreed to this statement and they thought that it will be controlled but 12.67% of the participants disagreed and only 8% did not know about it. Overall, 83.3% of the participants avoided handshaking and 99.3% of the participants washed their hands with soap and water regularly. Conclusion Our findings revealed a positive knowledge, attitude and suitable preventive practices towards COVID-19. This might be due to effective awareness campaign launched by the Government of Pakistan via print and electronic media. However, a limited number of participants showed disappointing response.