Knowledge, attitudes and practices towards COVID-19 guidelines among students in Bangladesh

This paper explores the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices towards COVID-19 guidelines among the students in Bangladesh. In achieving this objective, this paper used primary data collected from 1822 students wherein three different Likert scales and a one-way ANOVA test were used to assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) scores as well as mean differences with respect to different variables. This research reveals that the majority of students had a higher level of knowledge and a positive attitudes towards the COVID-19 guidelines. Contrarily, only 0.22 percent of students showed a strong compliance towards COVID-19 guidelines while the majority of students (60.54 percent) had rather poor adherence which is an alarming finding. Hence, reopening the educational institutions in Bangladesh amid this second wave of the pandemic is not advisable yet. Nevertheless, reinforcing the preventive measures through campaigns or online discussion is crucial to persuade people to follow the preventive guidelines. In addition to this, urgent vaccination of all students and teachers is highly recommended to contain this global disease in an attempt to reopen the on-campus education system as soon as possible.