Assessment of the level of perception of the risks of SARS-CoV-2 infection and of the accessibility to information about Covid-19 in Brazil

Abstract

The Covid-19 has been revealing a public health emergency of global importance. The study presented in this article aims to discuss the perception and communication by the Brazilian population of the risks of contracting that disease. A cross-sectional study involving adults who was at least 18 years old living in Brazilian territory was developed asking them to answer from 4 to 15 May 2020 an electronic questionnaire (adapted from Betsch) about perception and communication of the risks of coronavirus infections. A total of 1,291 participants were included in the study and the most of them were civil servants (56.2%, n=725). Female (62.9%, n=812) and people with higher education (91.5%, n=1181) also comprised more than 50% of the group. Although less than 50% of the total of participants (35.9%, n=464) were residents of the state of Paraná, they predominated when compared to the people who live in the other states. Most participants were aware of the pandemic and get news about it from different sources of information: especially television (18.9%), websites or portals of news (16.6%), social media (16.5%), newspapers (11.2%), health workforce (8.9%), family and friends (8%) and search engines (6.3%). Regarding the degree of confidence in the sources of information, the most of participants stated that they have high confidence in information given by health workforce (76.1%, n=982) and a great number of them expressed low confidence in information given by leaflets (35.3%, n=456), family and friends (46.7%, n=551), social media (39.7%, n=513) and phone (45.1%, n=582). From this study we could conclude that the level of perception and communication about Covid-19 among their participants is good. However, future studies with a qualitative and quantitative approach are necessary to achieve a profounder understanding of the matter.