Face mask attitude over the course of COVID-19: Did younger people behave differently?

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: During COVID-19, the surges in cases can be attributed to the lack of safety precautions. Health officials highly recommend use of face masks as a form of protection to curb the spread of the virus. Younger people may have less tendency to wear masks but did this attitude change if they knew someone affected with COVID-19? METHODS: We send an e-survey in the community regarding how mask habits have changed between early months of COVID-19 and now. These participants answered dichotomous questions about wearing a mask outside during the beginning of the pandemic, wearing a mask outside now, and whether anyone they know had been affected by the virus. They were also grouped in age categories that were 25 and under or above 25. Referencing the participant's age and their acquaintance's exposure to COVID-19, we used this data to determine the change in prevalence of wearing masks throughout the studied time period. RESULTS: We received 310 responses. Responders were divided into 2 groups i.e., Younger Group (YG) ≤ 25 (n=123) and Older Group (OG) > 25 (n=187). At the start of the pandemic (around 1st week of March), the YG and OG start wearing masks with a frequency of 52% (64/123) and 63.1% (118/187). After 12 weeks, this frequency increased to 82.1% (101/123) and 95.1% (178/187) respectively. Although the trend appears higher in the older group, it was statistically not significant (p=0.8) when Fischer exact 2x2 test is applied due to sampling size < 1000. When a variable of a loved one or an acquaintance known to have COVID-19 is applied, both groups behaved differently with a frequency of 53.46% (n= 54 vs 47 /101) & 76.96% (n= 137 vs 41 /178). With χ2 contingency table further analyzing 8 subgroups with dependent of COVID-19 news exposure, the χ2 statistic was 45.47 with a p-value < 0.00001 (significant at p < .05 with two-tailed analysis). CONCLUSIONS: Masks were adopted largely across the population as the pandemic got worse. Younger group still stayed below older group. This behavior gets reinforced in older group but didn't affect the younger group with news of someone known to be COVID positive. This needs to be further investigated as due to their possible asymptomatic carrier state accompanied by low interest may result in a higher spread rate, with more burden on healthcare and ICUs.