Preventive practice and associated factors among health care workers towards COVID-19 in Addis Ababa covid care center

  Background: COVID-19 has made exceptional challenges to public health globally. Healthcare experts who are at the frontline of the outbreak reaction are at increased risk of getting infected. The high infection rate of COVID-19 has been reported amongst frontline health care workers which might be linked to low prevention practice. However, in the context of Ethiopia, studies ascribed to the prevention practice against COVID-19 among healthcare workers are limited. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the Preventive practice against COVID-19 and associated factors among health care workers. Methods and materials: Institution-based cross-sectional study design was conducted on 240 healthcare workers at millennium covid care center and a pretested structured questionnaire was used for the data collection. The data was entered into epi data version 4.4.2.2 and exported to SPSS window version 25 for analysis. Descriptive statics and binary logistic regression were used. Odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval and p-value ≤ 0.05 were quantified to measure effect sizes of independent variables and to declare statistical significance respectively. Result: This study showed that 55% of health care workers have good preventive practice and In line with this, lack of personal protective equipment(AOR=2.978, 95%CI(1.426-6.220)), designed isolation area (AOR=2.251, 95%CI(1.056-4.799)), availability of chemical disinfectant (AOR=5.055, 95%CI (2.283-11.191)), training on covid case management(AOR=6.04, 95%CI(2.569-14.204)), infection prevention guideline availability (AOR=2.59, 95%CI(1.192-5.627), and discomfort while using PPE (AOR=4.125 95%CI (1.779-9.561))  showed significant association with the preventive practice of frontline health care workers towards covid 19. Conclusion: The overall finding of this study revealed that healthcare workers had poor preventive practice (45%) towards covid 19. Addressing these identified factors will enable to reduce the infection rate among health care providers. Keywords:  covid 19, prevention practice, factors, frontline, Ethiopia