COVID-19 Knowledge, Attude and Practce among Medical and Non-medical Students of Karachi, Pakistan - A Comparatve Cross-Sectonal Study Roheen Sohaira 1* , Hersha Madan 2 , Varsha Madan 3 , Aqsa Kabir 3 and Sadia Ayub 2 1 Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi, Pakistan 2 Sindh Medical College, Jinnah Sindh Medical University, Karachi, Pakistan 3 Dow Medical College, Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan * Corresponding author: Roheen Sohaira, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi, Pakistan, Tel: +923222179171; E-mail: roheensohaira@gmail.com Received date: July 23, 2020; Accepted date: August 04, 2020; Published date: August 11, 2020 Citaton: Sohaira R, Madan H, Madan V, Kabir A, Ayub S (2020) COVID-19 Knowledge, Attude and Practce among Medical and Non-medical Students of Karachi, Pakistan- A Comparatve Cross-Sectonal Study. Arch Med Vol. 12 Iss.5: 26 Copyright: ©2020 Sohaira R, et al. This is an open-access artcle distributed under the terms of the Creatve Commons Atributon License, which permits unrestricted use, distributon, and reproducton in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Objectve: To assess and compare knowledge, attude and practce regarding COVID-19 among medical and non- medical students of Karachi, Pakistan Methods: A cross sectonal study was conducted among medical and non-medical students of Karachi, Pakistan from April-May 2020. Male and female students studying in frst to ffh year at various medical and non-medical universites of Karachi were inducted through non probability convenience sampling afer getng their informed consent. Results: Out of the total 432 students, 331 (76.1%) were female while 101 (23.4%) were male. About 259 (60.0%) medical students and 153 (35.4%) non-medical students were aware about the detecton of COVID-19 in their country (p=0.013). More than half of the medical students, 221 (51.4%) and 113 (26.2%) non-medical students knew the unavailability of vaccine against COVID-19 (p ≤ 0.001). A total of 264 (61.1%) medical students and 158 (36.6%) non-medical students agreed that handwashing is necessary for the preventon of infecton (p ≤ 0.001). Almost half of the medical students, 201 (46.5%) were of the opinion that smoking will not prevent infecton as compared to 80 (18.5) non-medical students (p ≤ 0.001). Similarly, 191 (44.2%) medical students felt that antbiotcs will not prevent infecton as compared to 74 (17.1%) non-medical students (p ≤ 0.001). Upon comparison of the students pertaining to practce of COVID-19, 123 (28.5%) medical students said that they use alcoholic hand rub as compared to 61 (14.1%) non- medical students (p=0.043). Conclusion: In conclusion, this research clearly indicates the diference in knowledge, attude and practce among medical and non-medical students towards COVID-19. This refects an urgent need of planning more awareness campaigns and health policies to fght against COVID-19. This data can be used to further asses the satsfacton of students at a larger level. Keywords: Knowledge; Attude; Practce; COVID-19; Medical students Introducton Coronaviruses are a large family of single stranded, enveloped positve sense RNA virus, which infect both animals and humans [1]. There are four major subtypes of human pathogenic strain namely HKU1, NL63, 229E and OC43 [2], which usually cause mild respiratory disease except severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS) [1]. Since December, 2019, there have been increasing cases of atypical pneumonia in Wuhan, China caused by a new strain of coronavirus [3]. This virus is genetcally similar to that which causes an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, therefore World Health Organizaton (WHO) named this virus as SAR-COV-2 on February 11, 2020 and associated disease as COV-Disease-19 (COVID-19) [4]. Due to the rapid emergence of COVID-19, the World Health Organizaton (WHO) has declared it as a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 [5]. By April 19, 2020 COVID-19 has resulted in more than 2 million confrmed cases worldwide [6]. This disease can be transmited among humans directly through respiratory droplets and indirectly by coming in contact with contaminated objects [7]. It is highly contagious with clinical presentaton like fever, cough, sore throat, myalgia and fatgue with more severe illness in older people and people with underlying conditons like hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, cancer etc. [8]. In Pakistan the frst case of COVID-19 was reported on February 26, 2020 [9]. And now there are up to 20,000 confrmed cases [10]. This viral outbreak has made the general Research Article iMedPub Journals www.imedpub.com DOI: 10.36648/1989-5216.12.5.327 Archives of Medicine ISSN 1989-5216 Vol.12 No.5:26 2020 © Copyright iMedPub | This article is available from: http://www.archivesofmedicine.com/ 1