COVID-19-related attitudes, risk perceptions, preventive behaviours and economic impact in sub-Saharan African countries: implementing a longitudinal phone-based survey protocol in rural Senegalese households.

INTRODUCTION: Rural areas are considered safe havens against the increased spread of COVID-19 and associated restrictive measures, especially in contexts where public authorities are not in a position to systematically and substantially ease COVID-19-induced economic shocks. In the current sub-Saharan Africa context, still marked by uncertainty surrounding the spread of COVID-19, we present the protocol of an ongoing longitudinal study aimed at investigating COVID-19-related attitudes, risks perceptions, preventive behaviours and economic impact in rural areas in Senegal. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: A prospective randomised longitudinal study of 600 households located in three semiurban villages and nine randomly selected rural villages in the Niakhar area (located 135 km East of Dakar). Three ad hoc phone surveys are administered to 600 heads of households, their housewives in charge of managing the household and a relative living temporarily in the household, respectively. In addition to sharing identical sets of questions on several topics (risks perceptions, attitudes to curfew, attitudes to vaccines, beliefs about COVID-19 infection), the three separate survey questionnaires also include other topics (economic impact, local preventive strategies) whose related questions differ between questionnaires. As analysing evolutions is the study's primary focus, data on all the topics covered will be collected in three waves unless the spread of COVID-19 by mid-2021 justifies extending data collection. The present article presents the study protocol and details about the implementation of the first wave of data collection which started in July 2020. The decision to wait before presenting the protocol was based on the unprecedented context the COVID-19 pandemic. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The survey's protocol was approved by the Senegalese National Ethical Committee for Research in Health (131/MSAS/CNERS/Sec) and received authorisation from both the Senegalese Ministry of Health (619/MSAS/DPRS/DR) and the French Commission on Information Technology and Liberties (CNIL 2220771).

Beliefs and Risk Perceptions About COVID-19: Evidence From Two Successive French Representative Surveys During Lockdown.

BACKGROUND: The outbreak of COVID-19 has been a major interrupting event, challenging how societies and individuals deal with risk. An essential determinant of the virus' spread is a series of individual decisions, such as wearing face masks in public space. Those decisions depend on trade-offs between costs (or benefits) and risks, and beliefs are key to explain these. METHODS: We elicit beliefs about the COVID-19 pandemic during lockdown in France by means of surveys asking French citizens about their belief of the infection fatality ratio (IFR) for COVID-19, own risk to catch the disease, risk as perceived by others, and expected prevalence rate. Those self-assessments were measured twice during lockdown: about 2 weeks after lockdown started and about 2 weeks before lockdown ended. We also measured the quality of these beliefs with respect to available evidence at the time of the surveys, allowing us to assess the calibration of beliefs based on risk-related socio-demographics. Finally, comparing own risk to expected prevalence rates in the two successive surveys provides a dynamic view of comparative optimism with respect to the disease. RESULTS: The risk perceptions are rather high in absolute terms and they increased between the two surveys. We found no evidence for an impact of personal experience with COVID-19 on beliefs and lower risk perceptions of the IFR when someone in the respondent's family has been diagnosed with a disease. Answers to survey 1 confirmed this pattern with a clear indication that respondents were optimistic about their chances to catch COVID-19. However, in survey 2, respondents revealed comparative pessimism. CONCLUSION: The results show that respondents overestimated the probabilities to catch or die from COVID-19, which is not unusual and does not necessarily reflect a strong deviation from rational behavior. While a rational model explains why the own risk to catch COVID-19 rose between the two surveys, it does not explain why the subjective assessment of the IFR remained stable. The comparative pessimism in survey 2 was likely due to a concomitant increase in the respondents' perceived chances to catch the disease and a decreased expected prevalence rate.

Attitudes about COVID-19 Lockdown among General Population, France, March 2020.

Because the effectiveness of a coronavirus disease lockdown in curbing coronavirus disease spread depends on public support, acquiring real-time information about the way populations reacted to the lockdown is crucial. In France, such public support remained fragile among low-income persons, probably because the lockdown exacerbated preexisting social inequalities and conflicts.