Rural community awareness levels, challenges and strategies adopted to combat COVID-19: a cross-sectional e-survey

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: COVID-19 has a widespread effect on rural economies all over the world. It has affecting household incomes, and businesses in every sector of rural economies. Lockdown due to COVID-19 outbreak limiting the outdoor and regular physical activity, and further can leads to increased risk of chronic health conditions. Physical activity and yoga play a vital role in breaking the boredom due to COVID-19 lockdown and thereby, improves the quality of life. OBJECTIVE: To identifying the level of awareness and challenges faced by the people of rural communities due to the COVID-19 outbreak. MATERIALS AND METHODS:  A total of 36 participants were recruited by convenient sampling method from five different villages in District, Ambala, Haryana, India. E-survey questionnaires were circulated through WhatsApp messaging mobile-based application. The questionnaire was formed incorporating the three-point Likert scale with three domains, 1) Awareness, 2) Challenges and, 3) Strategies and 12 items. The questionnaire validation was carried out by the experts through Delphi survey method until S-CVI/Ave?> 0.8. The central tendency and dispersion of continuous variable age were expressed in mean with a 95% confidence interval (CI). Categorical data were reported in frequencies as a percentage (%) and sample size (n). The levels of significance were set at 0.05 to minimize Type 1 error. RESULTS:  The content validity index of the questionnaire, S-CVI/Ave?=?0.90. By contacting 36 potential participants, a total of 27 survey responses were recorded. Hence, the response rate (RR) was found to be 75%. The mean with 95% CI of age was 30.8 (27.3 to 34.3) years. A total of 94% (n=25) of villagers were aware of COVID-19, 88% (n=24) were facing challenges, and 86% (n=23) of participants are adopting the best strategies which includes, sealing of containment zone, usage of homemade mask made up of clothes, consuming traditional herbal medicine as immunity boosters for prophylaxis and involving in regular physical activity and yoga. CONCLUSION:  The rural populations were aware of COVID-19 and having adequate knowledge about COVID-19. They were facing challenges due to COVID-19 and prepared with the best strategies/methods to combat COVID-19.