Health‐seeking behaviors of patients with acute respiratory infections during the outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 in Wuhan,China |
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| Authors: | Juan Yang Hui Gong Xinhua Chen Zhiyuan Chen Xiaowei Deng Mengcen Qian Zhiyuan Hou Marco Ajelli Cecile Viboud Hongjie Yu |
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| Affiliation: | 1. School of Public Health, Fudan University, Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, Ministry of Education, Shanghai China ; 2. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Indiana University School of Public Health, Bloomington IN, USA ; 3. Division of International Epidemiology and Population Studies, Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda MD, USA |
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| Abstract: | ![]()
We conducted two surveys to evaluate the health‐seeking behaviors of individuals with acute respiratory infections (ARI) during the COVID‐19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. Among 351 participants reporting ARI (10.3%, 351/3,411), 36.5% sought medical assistance. Children were more likely to seek medical assistance than other age‐groups (66.1% vs. 28.0%‐35.1%). This population‐based study demonstrates that the majority of patients with ARI symptoms did not seek medical assistance during the COVID‐19 outbreak in Wuhan. These findings may be used to refine the estimates of disease burden and clinical severity of COVID‐19 and to plan for health resources allocation. |
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| Keywords: | acute respiratory infections, China, health‐ seeking behaviors, novel coronavirus disease 2019 |
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