JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Maintaining compliance with personal preventive measures is important to achieve the balance of pandemic control and work resumption. This study investigated factory workers’ compliance with four personal preventive measures at the beginning of work resumption in China following the COVID-19 outbreak.

Objective:

This study was investigate compliance with four personal preventive measures against COVID-19 among a sample of factory workers in Shenzhen, China. These preventive measures included consistent facemask wearing in any public spaces (workplace and other public settings), sanitizing hands using soaps/liquid soaps/alcohol-based hand rubs after returning from public spaces/touching public installations/equipment, avoiding meal/social gathering and avoiding crowded places. We also examined the effects of factors including socio-demographics, individual-level factors (knowledge, perception, and depressive symptoms), interpersonal-level factors (exposure to COVID-19 specific information through different media), and social structural-level factors (preventive measures implemented by the factories).

Methods:

Participants were adult factory workers who had resumed work in Shenzhen, China. A stratified two-stage cluster sampling design was used. Fourteen out of 100 factories that had resumed work were randomly selected. All full-time employees aged ≥18 years who had resumed work in these factories were invited to complete an online survey. A designated coordinator responsible for COVID-19 control in each factory facilitated the data collection. Out of 4158 workers who had resumed work in these factories, 3035 (73.0%) completed the online survey during March 1-14, 2020. Multilevel logistic regression models were fitted.

Results:

Among participants, 96.8% (n=2,938) and 98.7% (n=2,996) wore a facemask every time in the workplace and in other public settings in the past month, respectively. However, sanitizing hands (70.9%, n=2,152), avoiding social/meal gathering (73.3%, n=2,225) and avoiding crowded places (65.8%, n=1,997) were relatively low. After adjusting for significant background characteristics, at the individual level, knowledge about transmission routes of COVID-19 (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 1.18-1.28), perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 (AOR: 0.60-0.85), perceived effectiveness of individual (AOR: 1.05-1.09) and governmental preventive measures (AOR: 1.13-1.21), and number of preventive measures implemented by the factory (AOR: 1.31-1.67) were associated with all four personal preventive measures. Perceived preparedness to potential outbreak after work resumption was associated with all personal preventive measures (AOR: 1.10-1.47) with the exception of consistent face mask wearing. Perceived severity of COVID-19 was associated with higher compliance with two physical distancing measures (AOR: 1.05 & 1.07) but not with consistent face mask wearing or sanitizing hands. In addition, perceived effectiveness of preventive measures implemented by the factory (AOR: 1.09), depressive symptoms (AOR: 0.88), and exposure to COVID-19 specific information through official media channels (AOR: 1.07) and face-to-face communication (AOR: 0.92) were associated with sanitizing hands but not with other personal preventive measures.

Conclusions:

Measures to strengthen hand hygiene and physical distancing among factory workers are needed to reduce transmission following work resumption. Future programs within workplaces should address multilevel factors.