Assessment of Health Workers’ Concern about COVID-19 Pandemic: Implication for Surveillance Activities among Primary Health Care Workers in Oyo State, South-Western Nigeria

Background: The outbreak of COVID-19 has continued to threaten the existence of human race. The novelty and unstable epidemiologic pattern of the virus had generated so much concern among the global health experts. These concerns were found to be escalated among frontline health care workers to the extent of impeding the timeliness of the response activities. To slow down the spread of the already established community transmission through the surveillance activities, the concern of the health workers at the community level needs to be addressed. Therefore, this study assessed the concern about COVID-19 pandemic among the primary health workers in Oyo State, Nigeria.MethodsThis was an online cross-sectional survey conducted among primary health care workers in Oyo State between March and April 2020. Using a two-stage sampling technique, we recruited 284 respondents. A semi-structured questionnaire linked to the Google form was used to collect data. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 25; bivariate analysis was done using Chi-square and binary logistic regression was used to identify the predictors of health workers’ concern at 5% level of significance.ResultsThe mean age of respondents was 45.0 + 9.0 years. About 52.5% had goodk knowledge of COVID-19. In the domains of concern, 66.9%, 53.2%, 51.4%, and 46.5% of the respondents expressed government-related concern, self-satisfaction related concern, work-related concern and social status related concern respectively. Male respondents were less likely to express concern about COVID-19 compared with their female counterparts (aOR= 0.39, 95% CI = 0.20 – 0.76). Nurses/midwives (aOR= 0.21, 95% CI = 0.05 – 0.85) had lesser likelihood of expressing concern about COVID-19 while middle staff (aOR= 2.5, 95% CI = 1.18 – 5.39) and income earner of ≥ N200, 000 (aOR= 2.3, 95% CI = 1.34 – 3.92) had higher likelihood of expressing concern about COVID-19.ConclusionThe study revealed an average knowledge of COVID-19 among the respondents. Government-related and self-satisfaction related concerns were majorly expressed by the majority of the PHC workers. Therefore, holistic policy that addresses the welfare and training of the HCWs is recommended.