Knowledge, attitude, practice and perceived barriers among healthcare professionals regarding COVID-19: A Cross-sectional survey from Pakistan

Muhammad Saqlain; Muhammad Muddasir Munir; Saif Ur Rehman; Aqsa Gulzar; Sahar Naz; Zaheer Ahmed; Azhar Hussain Tahir; Muhammad Mashhood

In earlier December, first case of pneumonia of unknown cause originated in Wuhan, capital city of Province Hubei, China, and on 31 December 2019, with emergence of more such cases, Wuhan gained attention by World Health Organization (WHO) [1] . The pathogen identified was named as novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), currently called as severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), an enveloped and single stranded RNA virus [2] which has phylogenetic resemblance to SARS-COV-1 [3] . Owing to rapid spread of this deadly virus from epicenter to number of countries, WHO declared it as public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020. Later, due to uncased fast spread, severity of illness, the continual escalation in number of affected countries, cases and causalities, WHO declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 [4] . To date (12 April, 2020), the COVID-19 have spread to 210 countries and territories accounted for 1,790,550 laboratory confirmed cases and 109,654 mortalities also attributed to this deadly pathogen [5] .