Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Dental Students About COVID-19

Plain-language summary

Coronavirus disease 2019 (abbreviated "COVID- 19") is a pandemic respiratory disease that is caused by a novel coronavirus and was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The disease is highly infectious, and its main clinical symptoms include fever, dry cough, fatigue, myalgia, and dyspnoea.1 In China, 18.5% of the patients with COVID-19 developed to the severe stage, which is characterized by acute respiratory distress syndrome, septic shock, difficult-to-tackle metabolic acidosis, and bleeding and coagulation dysfunction. After China, COVID-19 spread across the world and many governments implemented unprecedented measures like suspension of public transportation, the closing of public spaces, close management of communities, and isolation and care for infected people and suspected cases. The Malaysian government had enforced Movement Control Order (MCO) from 18th March to 4th May 2020 and henceforth Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) until 9th June 2020. The battle against COVID-19 is still continuing in Malaysia and all over the world. Due to the CMO and CMCO in the country, public and private universities have activated the e-learning mode for classes and as the government ordered, universities are closed and no face-to-face activities allowed. This has forced students of all disciplines including dentistry to stay at home which are wide-spread across Malaysia and shift to e- learning mode. To guarantee the final success for fight against COVID-19, regardless of their education status, students' adherence to these control measures are essential, which is largely affected by their knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) towards COVID-19 in accordance with KAP theory. Once the restrictions are eased students have to come back and resume their clinical work in the campus. Hence, in this study we assessed the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (KAP) towards COVID-19 and the students preference for online learning.

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