AWARENESS STATUS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC AMONG ADOLESCENTS AND RURAL ADULTS

Background – Covid-19 pandemic affected people globally by physically, mentally, economically, socially, educationally and so on, and it increased too much social and health care burden. Many people have to lose their lives due to coronavirus disease. Still people are suffering from this pandemic. Government and non-government agencies continuously organizing awareness development programmes to make the people aware and keep them secure from it. But, effectiveness of such programmes need to explore to make it more effective to all people. Purpose - With the goal to find out the Covid-19 awareness status among adolescents living in urban or semi urban areas and adults living in rural areas of Madhya Pradesh along with its association with age, education, and family income the present study had been designed. Methods – Awareness status about Covid-19 pandemic of all randomly selected 200 participants including 102 adults and 98 adolescents male (N =100) and female (N = 100) were screened using self-designed 17 items Covid-19 awareness screening. To analyse Mean, SD, t-value and correlations of obtained data SPSS (20.0) was used. Result – Finding of this study suggested no significant difference on Covid-19 awareness between male (M±SD= 9.55±3.328) and female (M±SD = 8.94±2.658) of all age group. However, adults (M±SD = 11.17±2.398) were significantly differ from adolescents (M±SD = 7.23±2.171) on their awareness. Apart from this, the people who were vaccinated for Covid-19 (M±SD = 10.61±2.893), were also significantly differ from those who were not vaccinated (M±SD = 8.63±2.879). Awareness score were significantly correlated with age, years of education, and family monthly income. Conclusion – Awareness is too much important to make changes in human behaviour and so to fight against Covid-19 disease. Regular awareness programs are definitely helpful to make the people aware but, need to reach to entire people beyond the geographical, social, economic, educational, and age boundaries.