Social Awareness and Use of Face Masks among Medical Students in Association with the COVID-19 Pandemic

A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted to assess the level of social awareness and use of face mask in association with the COVID-19 pandemic among the medical students of Ad-din Sakina Women’s Medical College, Jashore, Bangladesh, between January and February of 2022. The study was carried out in the Department of Community Medicine. A total of 354 students of the same medical college participated in the survey. Data was collected by structured questionnaire and data processing and statistical analysis were done by using SPSS version 25.0. The age of the respondents was between 18 and 26 years. The mean age was 21.73 years. 82.8% of respondents were Muslims and 15.3% were Hindu. The average monthly family income of respondents was about 53,000 BDT. 83% of the respondents used face masks for the protection against COVID-19. 70.3% of the respondents relied more on the surgical type of mask. According to the survey the main mode of transmission of virus was found to be through respiratory droplets by 87.3% of the respondents. However, 13% failed to recognize droplet inhalation as a source of transmission. 92.1% of the respondents believed that the route of transmission includes eyes, nose, and mouth. Among the respondents 96% sanitize hand and face properly and 87.3% maintain social distance. It was found out that 7.1 percent of the respondents were affected by COVID-19 and 100% respondents were vaccinated against COVID-19. These findings clearly showed a satisfactory level of awareness and attitudes among the medical students towards COVID-19. Promoting the use of facemasks and educating the public about mask-wearing as an effective tool in disease prevention may also help to increase the public’s perceived benefits, which may then also contribute to increasing mask-wearing compliance. Facemasks play a pivotal role in the prevention and control of infectious respiratory disease transmission.


Introduction
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global public health threat and has evolved to become a pandemic crisis around the world, which is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome, coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). 1In response to this serious situation, COVID-19 was declared as a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health

Methods
This study was a cross-sectional, descriptive study.This study was conducted in the department of community medicine among the

Conclusion
To conclude, it is our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 80% of the study participants adopted social isolation strategies, regular hand washing, maintaining personal hygiene and use of face mask against covid.The students of Ad-din Sakina Women's Medical College, Jashore, Bangladesh, showed expected level of knowledge about covid-19 virus and implemented proper strategies to prevent its spread.

Bogoch II, Watts
Organization (WHO) on January 30 and called for collaborative efforts of all countries to prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19.In 2020, a new global pandemic has emerged, caused by a news strain of respiratory virus called SARS-Cov2; this pandemic started in Wuhan, China in December 2019, possibly due to cross species transmission, and involved almost every country in the world CBMJ 2024 January: Vol. 13 No. 01 causing mostly mild upper respiratory tract symptoms and in a minority of cases lower respiratory tract infection, called corona virus disease-19 (Covid-19). 2 A recent study in Jordan showed that most students believe that hand shaking (93.7%), kissing (94.7%) and droplet infection (91.0%) are the primary mode of transmission.3 There are different types of face masks in use by the community and these include N95, N100, N99, surgical mask and cloth masks.The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that incorrect use and disposal of face masks may actually increase the rate of transmission.2 The government of Uganda has put in place measures to be observed by the public to avoid the spread of COVID-19 in the communities but studies to evaluate whether the communities are following these measures reported a gap among different categories of Ugandans. 4Some authors reported that higher levels of information and education were associated with more positive attitudes towards COVID-19 preventive practices. 5Perception of risk is also a key factor in commitment to prevention during outbreaks of global epidemics. 5This study aims to determine the level of social awareness and the use of face mask among the medical students of a private medical college in Bangladesh.

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Our study also shows quite similarity within a population of Chinese residents where nearly all of the participants wearing face mask when leaving their homes.6 Mitrokhin et al. conducted a study in Moscow and showed that 83.7% medical university students wearing masks during a pandemic mandatory for the entire population not only for patients with infectious diseases, or for those in contact with sick people. 7Our study also shows similarity with the study.Done by Duong et al. as they showed that in Vietnam, university students use surgical masks (57.6%) and non-antibacterial cloth masks 23.1%). 8Our study shows the respondents use the mask average 6 hours in a day and they are using it properly.According to the respondents, N95 gives them more protection against COVID-19.97.7% of them know the correct steps of wearing a face mask.According to the respondents 87.3% think the main mode of transmission of covid 19 is eye, nose and mouth.Sondakh et al. suggested that in Indonesia, wearing mask and washing hands with soap water by 95% medical students prevent the primary mode of transmission, which shows similarity of perceptions with our study. 9Our study shows that the mask is effective at preventing infectious droplet from spreading.72% respondents wash hand before wearing mask.The most of them maintain the other personal protection measure against covid-19 most of them avoid removing of mask in public place and during taking with patient.And 97.5% of respondents wear masks in the hospital premises.They (81.9%) avoid touching mask frequently after wearing it.96% of them sanitize their hands and face properly.98.3% of them maintain personal etiquette in front of others.And 87.3% of them maintain social distance.67.8% of the respondents are not reusing the mask.Matusiak et al. showed that, in Poland, among 2256 students among most of the medical students used facemask more commonly inside and outside of medical colleges, use masks for a longer period of time, they also wore single use of mask and less frequently re-use them which shows similarity to our study. 10In our study, 97.2% of the respondents dispose of the mask properly.84.5% of the respondents clean their hand after taking off their mask, as reported by a study done in Uganda, which shows dissimilarity with our study.Because medical students have satisfactory knowledge on the use of face mask.92.9% of the respondents have never been affected covid-19.All the respondents were the public about mask-wearing as an effective tool in disease prevention may also help to increase the public's perceived benefits, which CBMJ 2024 January: Vol. 13 No. 01 vaccinated in our institution.In addition, promoting the use of facemasks and educating may then also contribute to increasing maskwearing compliance.Facemasks play a pivotal role in the prevention and control of infectious respiratory disease transmission.To enhance the widespread use of facemasks, further studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions targeted at increasing mask-wearing.Multiple approaches should be used to address the factors that influence compliance with maskwearing.It is also important for health authorities to provide clear guidelines for the production, use and sanitization or re-use of face masks, and consider their distribution as shortages allow.Clear and implementable guidelines can help increase compliance and bring communities closer to the goal of reducing and ultimately stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Table II :
Among Distribution of the respondents according to their religion Table-I: Distribution of the respondents according to their age them, 293(82.8%)were Muslims; Hindus were 54(15.3%)and the others group (other than Muslims and Hindus) were 7(2%) (Table-II).

Table III :
Number of respondents lives per room

Table V :
Year of studying of the respondents

Table VII :
Route of transmission of COVID-19

Table VIII :
Ever been affected with COVID-19

Table IX :
Vaccinated against COVID-19 age group is 26 years which is about 8%.We can assume that the young group of people from 20-24 are more conscious about using mask.Among CBMJ 2024 January: Vol. 13 No. 01 the respondents 82.8% are Muslims and 15.3% are Hindus and 2% are others.Among the respondents, 91.8% are single and 8.2% are married.goodlevels of knowledge regarding COVID-19 as well as positive attitudes in wearing face mask, which study has quite similarity with our study.