Abstract:

COVID-19 is a communicable disease. Awareness of the mode of transmission by the masses could increase compliance with the precautionary measures by the masses. Hence, this study was carried out to determine pregnant women’s awareness of the transmission mode of COVID-19 and interactions with the victims of the disease in South-South Nigeria. It was a cross-sectional research design. Out of the six States (Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross-River, Delta, Edo and Rivers) that constitute South-South Nigeria, multistage sampling technique was used to select 144 pregnant women from the primary, secondary and tertiary health facilities in Edo State. The instrument used for data collection was Questionnaire on Pregnant Women’s Perception of Coronavirus Pandemic (QPWPCP). The reliability of the instrument was conducted using an internal consistency test for reliability. The Cronbach Alpha yielded a coefficient of 0.711. Data collected were analyzed using frequencies, percentages, mean and Spearman Rank Order correlation. The result showed that 77.1% of the respondents indicated awareness of mode of transmission of COVID-19, 69.4% indicated that COVID-19 victims should not be stigmatized and 91% were of the opinion that COVID-19 victims will survive with treatment. Significant relationship was observed between awareness of transmission mode of COVID-19 among the pregnant women and interaction with people with COVID-19: rho = - 0.221; p-value = 0.008. Healthcare providers should intensify campaigns to create awareness about mode of transmission of Coronavirus infection and the need for the populace to sustain the preventive measures.