Community responses during the early phase of the COVID-19 epidemic in Hong Kong: risk perception, information exposure and preventive measures

Kin On Kwok; Kin Kit Li; Ho Hin Chan; Yuan Yuan Yi; Arthur Tang; Wan In Wei; Yeung Shan Wong

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10. 1101 /2020 Many of the respondents are female (69%; 1176/1715), of young age (18-44 years) (80%; 1380/1715), 180 working population (68%; 1168/1715). The study sample is comparable to the population in terms of 181 residential district (effect size=0.27). Table 2 Table 3 shows the perceived susceptibility and perceived severity towards COVID-19 among 189 respondents. Most respondents regarded themselves as likely to be infected with likely/likely: 89%), and most considered the symptoms of COVID-19 (if infected) as serious (very 191 serious/serious: 97%). Less than a quarter of the respondents thought that it was likely to have 19 cured (if infected) (15%), and only 18% thought that it was likely to survive through When referencing to existing diseases (Table 4) , almost all respondents (>98%) consider equivalent 194 disease severity between COVID-19 and SARS. This magnitude was similar to other deadly NCDs 195 (85%-94%), but much higher than the annual seasonal influenza (66%). CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.