Awareness of Covid-19 Among Middle School Children- Lessons Learnt Over A Year Pandemic-Borne Period
Abstract
Background
The year 2020 will be reminisced in the young minds as they have come across the greatest global crisis. Though the school children have been well educated about the preventive measures against COVID 19 but the progression of this pandemic disease remains uncertain. Hence, we wanted to assess the awareness of middle school students towards COVID 19 at its peak, 6 months and after a year period in Tamil Nadu, India through an online survey.
Material and methods
A cross-sectional web-based descriptive survey was done to evaluate COVID-19-related knowledge and awareness among middle school students in June 2020, December 2020 and June 2021, in the state of Tamil Nadu. All data were statistically analyzed using SPSS 20.0. The significance level of tests was accepted as p<0.05.
Results
A total of 125 middle school children in the age group between 9-13 years participated in the study. The questionnaire was categorized into 2 platforms (General, scientific knowledge and preventive measures). Males comprised of 57% and females 43% in our study. The males had 73%, 95 % and females 74%,87 % awareness on platform I and II respectively. The students from urban, semi-urban, rural had 73%,76%,71% knowledge and awareness on platform I and 91%,93%,89% on platform II respectively.
Conclusion
This study evaluated the knowledge and awareness of covid-19 among middle school children. Information on children's knowledge may help health professionals develop age-appropriate explanations of Covid 19 and bring out easily understandable simple preventive strategies.
Running title
Awareness of covid-19 among middle school children
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