Sacrifice of patients with severe COVID-19 during the first weeks of the pandemic in Peru: attitudes and associated factors

ABSTRACT

There was a lot of confusion and fear when COVD-19 arrived to the country, so much so that some were of the opinion that extreme measures should be taken for confirmed cases, however, this had not been evaluated. The objective of the research was to determine the factors associated with agreement to sacrifice people with severe COVD-19 during the first weeks of the pandemic in Peru. Cross-sectional analytical study, using secondary data, the dependent variable was the perception of agreement that if someone has a severe case of coronavirus they should be sacrificed/euthanized or similar, to avoid contagion;this was crossed with other influential variables. Of the 3331 respondents, 8% (269) strongly agreed and 9% (297) agreed that people with severe COVID-19 should be euthanized. In multivariate analysis, agreeing with culling was associated with sex (women were less in agreement with sacrificing, aPR 0.73;95%CI 0.62-0.86;p<0.001), also according to religious orientation (atheists were more in agreement with culling, aPR 1.40;95%CI 1.16-1.69;p<0.001), and to the scores they obtained in the fatalism test's (aPR 1.09;CI95% 1.07-1.11;p<0.001), level of knowledge (aPR 0.85;CI95% 0.81-0.88;p<0.001) and the perception of fear or exaggeration by the media (aPR 1.02;CI95% 1.01-1.03;p<0.001). A significant percentage agreed with sacrificing the sick people, being this associated with fear, fatalism and a low level of knowledge.