A Cross-sectional Study on Awareness and
Correlating Factors Towards COVID-19 among
Adult Women in Dhaka City
Afzalonnisa
Department of Food and Nutrition
Bangladesh Home Economics College
Dhaka, Bangladesh
afzalonnisatunji02@gmail.com
Md. Riad Hossain
Sher-E-Bangla Medical College
Barishal, Bangladesh
mdriadhossain221995@gmail.com
Shajada Akter Khanam
Department of Food and Nutrition
Bangladesh Home Economics College
Dhaka, Bangladesh
sajedasharminbhec@gmail.com
Md. Farhad Hassan
Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Islamic University of Technology
Gazipur, Bangladesh
farhadhassan@iut-dhaka.edu
Abstract—Dhaka, capital of COVID-19 ’s 9th most infected
country a day, is appallingly receiving 9,422.1 infected per
million to date. To upset this intimidating infected rate, public
awareness, and adherence to control measures is a dire need.
The objective of this cross-sectional analysis is to gauge the
awareness and disclose the associating factors that influence
the awareness among the adult women of Dhaka city, based on
KAP theory. A self-administrated questionnaire following the
national guidelines was developed to assess knowledge, attitudes,
and practices of COVID-19 among respondents, which was
disseminated to 139 respondents deploying the quota sampling
process. Statistical representation of the baseline data spotted
that only 56.11% of the participants own fair knowledge, while
83.44% demonstrates optimistic attitudes towards COVID-19.
However, merely 52% of the respondents reported following the
precautionary measures against COVID-19. Cross-tabulation
on the surveyed data disclose that education, occupation, and
monthly family income are significant predictors (p<0.05)
of knowledge among the respondents. Significant Odd Ratios
(p<0.05) further justifies the reflections of respondents’ knowl-
edge on the attitudinal and behavioral statements. This study
detected suboptimal awareness and urged for the collective
efforts orchestrated by the Ministry of Health to intensify the
awareness through recommended channel to reduce associated
health risk.
Index Terms—COVID-19, Awareness, Practices, Food Habits,
Lifestyles.
I. I NTRODUCTION
COVID-19, the Public Health Emergency of International
Concern (PHEIC), has forced the World Health Organization
(WHO) to declare the unprecedented event as a pandemic first
time in the history of the 21
st
century [1]. The surge of fear
of COVID-19 first hits the world in late December of 2019
with the detection of an extraordinary outbreak of respiratory
illness among the vendors and dealers of the Hunan seafood
market of Wuhan city, China [2], [3]. The causative virus
of this infectious disease was provisionally named as 2019
Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and subsequently termed
as SARS-CoV2, a single-stranded, enveloped RNA virus
having crown-like exterior with the presence of spikes at the
outer surface of the envelope [4]. β-CoV, among the four
genera of coronavirus ( α-CoVs, β-CoVs, γ -CoVs, δ-Covs),
is thought to be the pathogenic agent of this disease, which
demonstrates 86.9% genomic matching with earlier studied
bat SARS-like CoV genome [5], [6]. To date, this dreadful
contagious disease has crossed geographical and political
borders and reached 216 countries, areas, and territories,
resulting in 10,321,689 laboratory-confirmed cases, which
lead 5,07,435 individuals to death [7].
Like its’ predecessors SARS and MERS, SARS CoV2
spreads from human to human by means of respirational
discharge (sneezing, coughing), skin to skin contact or con-
tact with infected surfaces, etc [?]. When a person gets
infected, SARS CoV2 remains internalized within the cell of
the upper respiratory tract and initiate the replication. After
the incubation period, patients may experience mild fever,
dry cough, shortness of breathing, and in severe cases, may
suffer from Adult Respiratory Disease Syndrome (ARDS)
linked with Multiple Organ Dysfunction (MOD) [8]. To
date, no specific medicine has been found to fight against
this disease, so adherence to preventive control measures
is a must. Cleaning hand regularly with soap or alcohol-
based rub, wearing mask, following respiratory hygiene,
maintaining social distance are the only hopes to minimize
2020 IEEE 8th R10 Humanitarian Technology Conference (R10-HTC) | 978-1-7281-1110-0/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/R10-HTC49770.2020.9357004
© IEEE 2021. This article is free to access and download, along with rights for full text and data mining, re-use and analysis.