Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of University Students of Lahore Regarding Coronavirus Vaccines

Abstract

Background and Objective: A new coronavirus SARS -COV-2 is responsible for the disease termed COVID- 19. On 31st December, 2019, several cases of viral Pneumonia were reported to WHO from Wuhan, China. In Pakistan first case was reported on 20th February, 2020. It was declared as Pandemic by WHO on 11th March, 2020. The loss of human life throughout the world along with economic and social interruption was devastating. The aim of this study is to assess knowledge, attitude and practices of university students of Lahore regarding coronavirus vaccines. Methods: An online cross-sectional study was conducted among 171 university students on a self-administered structured pre-tested questionnaire from 1st July 2021 to 15 August 2021 after approval from Institutional Review Board. A written consent form was filled by each student online. The questionnaire comprised of four sections. First section dealt with sociodemographic profile and second, third and fourth section had questions related to knowledge, attitude and practices respectively. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 27. The knowledge, attitude and practices were graded as good (>70% correct answers), satisfactory (50-70%) and poor (<50%). Chi- square tests were applied to find out any statistical significance between the sociodemographic parameters and knowledge, attitude and practice regarding COVID-19 vaccine. P-value of ≤0.05 is considered to be statistically significant. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 21.652 ± 2.14 years. Good knowledge, attitude and practices were 36.8%, 88.3% and 52.3% respectively. Willingness towards vaccination was shown by 89.5% students. Only 48% students had received both doses of the vaccine, while only 6.4% knew about all the vaccines that were available in Pakistan. Age was statistically associated with knowledge (p=0.03) and gender with attitude (p=0.048). Conclusion: It can be concluded from the study that the students had poor knowledge but their attitude and practices were much better. Organizing health education sessions and awareness seminars will help in increasing the knowledge of the students leading to improved attitude and practices towards disease prevention.