Home quarantine is a useful strategy to prevent the coronavirus outbreak: Identifying the reasons for non-compliance in some Iranians

Abstract

Introduction: The coronavirus outbreak has become a worrying issue and some people refuse to stay at home. Therefore, this study aims to identify the reasons behind some Iranian people's refusal to stay at home to prevent further virus transmission. Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted on postgraduate students in Iran. A questionnaire was designed based on 50 experts’ opinions by using the Delphi method and 203 students completed the designed questionnaire in telegram groups. Results: 35% of participants were upper 30 years of age, 70.4% were female, 74.4% had no coronavirus infection among their relatives, and 54.7% of them were Ph.D. candidates. The relations between “unclear accountability of events by some officials” and age as well as “failure to provide dissenting viewpoints and critical comments” and age were statistically significant (p = 0.027، p = 0.014). Moreover the relation between coronavirus infected relative and “persistent beliefs” was statistically significant (p = 0.014). The Chi-square test showed that gender, degree, resident and education province did not affect questions answering. The greatest agreement with questions is as following: lack of real situation understanding; 89.7%, people's livelihoods, and lack of government planning for low-income groups support; 86.7%, lack of people's knowledge concerning the coronavirus; 80.8%, lack of communicative educations for crisis situations; 79.8%, false assurance as well as minimizes the risks; 78.3%. Conclusion: Identifying the non-compliance factors with health recommendations can guide health care providers and managers to implementation of beneficial intervention.

Keywords

• Coronavirus
• COVID -19
• Prevention
• Control