Food Safety Knowledge, Attitudes, and Self-Reported Practices Among Medical Staff in China Before, During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Lin Luo,1– 4,&ast; Jie Ni,5,&ast; Mengyun Zhou,6,&ast; Chunyi Wang,5 Wen Wen,5 Jingjie Jiang,5 Yongran Cheng,7 Xingwei Zhang,5 Mingwei Wang,5 Wenjun Wang1 1Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Natural Products and Functional Food, College of Food Science and Engineering, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, People’s Republic of China; 2Hangzhou Ruolin Hospital Management Co. Ltd, Hangzhou, 310007, People’s Republic of China; 3Hangzhou Kaihong Technology Co., Ltd, Hangzhou, 310059, People’s Republic of China; 4Gege Medical Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd, Shanghai, 200082, People’s Republic of China; 5Hangzhou Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 310015, People’s Republic of China; 6Department of Molecular & Cellular Physiology, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Nagano, 3900803, Japan; 7School of Public Health, Hangzhou Medical College, Hangzhou, 311300, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Mingwei Wang; Wenjun Wang Email wmw990556@163.com; wwjun9999@jxau.edu.cnPurpose: To compare food safety knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported practices among medical staff in China before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.Patients and Methods: The questionnaire was anonymous. All respondents were Chinese medical personnel. A Chi-square contingency table was used to compare the knowledge and attitudes of Chinese medical staff before, during and after COVID-19. R statistical software (v4.0.0) was used for analysis.Results: A total of 1431 valid responses (57.3% from female respondents) were included in our analysis. Medical professionals were geographically distributed as follows: eastern China, 55.5%; central China, 19.7%; western China, 24.1%; Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan, 0.05%. Medical professionals reported that they paid greater attention to food safety after the COVID-19 pandemic compared with before the epidemic. Self-reported knowledge of and attitudes toward food safety among medical staff were significantly different before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic (both P< 0.001).Conclusion: After the COVID-19 pandemic, medical professionals paid increasing attention to food safety, which is a clinically important change. Because medical professionals can influence public understanding of food safety, their increased attention to this subject may enable them to promote food safety knowledge more actively in their work. This may in turn promote a better understanding of food safety and protect the health of the general public.Keywords: food safety, medical staff, COVID-19, questionnaire