Coverage of Health Information by Different Sources in Communities: Implication for COVID-19 Epidemic Response

Health personnel and community workers are at the front line of the COVID-19 emergency response and need to be equipped with adequate knowledge related to epidemics for an effective response. This study aimed to identify the coverage of COVID-19 health information via different sources accessed by health workers and community workers in Vietnam. A cross-sectional study using a web-based survey was carried out from January to February 2020 in Vietnam. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) was used for recruiting participants. We utilized the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine the construct validity of the questionnaire. A higher percentage of participants knew about &ldquo
Clinical and pathogen characteristics of COVID-19&rdquo
compared to &ldquo
Regulations and policies related to COVID-19&rdquo
The percentage of participants accessing the information on &ldquo
Guidelines and policies on prevention and control of COVID-19&rdquo
was the lowest, especially among medical students. &ldquo
Mass media and peer-educators&rdquo
channels had a higher score of accessing COVID-19 information, compared to &ldquo
Organizations/ agencies/ associations&rdquo
sources. Participants consumed most of their COVID-19 information via &ldquo
Internet, online newspapers, social networks&rdquo
Our findings indicate an urgency to re-design training programs and communication activities for a more effective dissemination of information related to the COVID-19 epidemic or epidemics in general.