ABSTRACT
What is already known about this topic? Elderly persons are vulnerable to infectious diseases, and nutritional status and health conditions were important to evaluate for disease prevention and ability to recover for the elderly during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. What is added by this report? In our study, a rapid assessment questionnaire was used to investigate the change of household life and dietary intake of the elderly (aged 60 years or more) during community closure. Food consumption frequency of aquatic food products, soybeans, and fresh fruits declined dramatically with reductions of 70.9%, 70.9%, and 53.0%, respectively, and 49.6% of the elderly lived with chronic non-communicable diseases but had little knowledge of nutrition and health. What are the implications for public health practice? Community closure measures in Wuhan City have played a key role in cutting off the transmission route of COVID-19 and protecting vulnerable groups. As a high-risk population, the elderly should be advised to maintain and strengthen a balanced diet with proper nutrition through increasing intake of aquatic food products, soybeans, fruits, and vegetables, reducing total caloric intake, and decreasing oil and salt consumption. These measures will be significant for the elderly to reduce the risk of chronic disease complications and COVID-19 infection and to decrease the chance of critical illness.
ABSTRACT
In order to identify the status of salt-related knowledge and behavior of the residents who were active in WeChat software between 2019 and 2020, 10-day salt-related surveys were conducted in 2019 and 2020 based on the WeChat public platform of China Healthy Lifestyle for All Campaign. Distribution and scores of salt-related knowledge, salt reduction behavior and high-salt intake behavior between 2019 and 2020 were compared. Data of 2109 participants in 2019 and 12,732 participants in 2020 were left for analysis. Overall, 88.2% of participants in 2019 had a willingness to reduce the amount of cooking salt in their households, significantly lower than 90.2% in 2020 (p-value < 0.05). In 2019 and 2020, over 80% of the participants knew fine dried noodles contain salt, but less than 30% knew ice cream contains salt. Over 78% of participants chose 5 g or 6 g for the maximum daily salt intake of healthy adults, and about 98% of participants knew that excessive salt intake would increase the risk of hypertension in both years. The percentage of participants who used salt measuring spoons asked restaurants to use less salt, read the sodium content on the nutrition facts table, chose foods with low sodium content and regularly used low-sodium salt, were 36.1%, 45.0%, 44.1%, 40.3% and 35.8% in 2019, and the percentage increased significantly to 46.4%, 49.2%, 50.8%, 47.1% and 43.4% in 2020 (all p-value < 0.05). The percentage of people regularly eating pickled mustard tubers, salted vegetables and sauce foods or using high-salt condiments also increased from 2019 to 2020. The median of salt-related knowledge scores, salt reduction behavior scores and high-salt intake behavior scores were 11, 2, 5 points in 2019, and 10, 3, 5 points in 2020, respectively. Compared to 2019, the salt-related knowledge score was relatively lower, while the salt reduction behavior score and high-salt intake behavior score were relatively higher in 2020. Besides, the score of salt-related knowledge and behaviors differed in different gender, age and hypertension groups. The COVID-19 epidemic may have influenced the salt-related knowledge and behaviors status of WeChat users in China. Promotion and education of salt-related knowledge and online behavior intervention are still needed, particularly for male and hypertension patients in the future.