Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Associated with COVID-19 Among School Students in Bharatpur, Chitwan District of Nepal

Abstract

Background: The emergence of the novel Coronavirus in December 2019 from Wuhan, China, now named SARS-COV-2, which causes COVID-19 disease has now reached the pandemic level. The ongoing pandemic has already infected more than fifteen million people and over hundred thousand people around the world has died. The knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of people towards this disease is important to understand to limit its transmission. Methods: A purposive cross-sectional study was conducted among 101 secondary level students in Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal to assess their KAP. Results: The majority of the students were found to be knowledgeable of the timeline of the first outbreak (92.08%) and nearly three-fourth participants were aware of the hand-washing duration of 20 seconds (73.27%). The knowledge of the presence of disease in Nepal (50.50%), the causative agent of disease (65.53%), and symptoms (57.43%) showed that there is significant knowledge gap among participants. The good proportion of participants were found to have a positive attitude towards the prevention and control of the disease. The majority of the respondents reported using face mask (77.23%), adopting handwashing measures (79.21%) as preventive measures for COVID-19. The majority of the students were highly concerned about the disease. Conclusion: In summary, secondary level students of Chitwan, Nepal were found to have fair knowledge and understanding of the disease, showed a moderately positive attitude towards preventive measure and reported appropriate preventive practices against COVID-19. It is recommended that a similar