Abstract
Objective: To assess the knowledge and attitude toward coronavirus
disease-2019 (COVID-19) among Syrian community pharmacists. Methods: A
cross-sectional study was performed between March 17th and April 10th,
2020 among practicing community pharmacists in Syria. Systematic random
sampling strategy was used, and data was collected through an online
questionnaire covering pharmacists’ knowledge and attitude towards
COVID-19. Descriptive analysis was used to describe participants’
demographics, knowledge and attitude mean score. For inferential
statistics, t-test, ANOVA and Spearman’s correlation were used to
evaluate the relationship between study variables. Results: Of the 1236
randomly selected practicing community pharmacists, 427 completed the
questionnaire (35%). Our participants primary sources of knowledge were
social media and foreign health authorities’ websites. They achieved a
mean good score of knowledge and attitude, of 7.17±1.3 and 1.84±0.5,
respectively. Around two-thirds of the participants were able to
identify all symptoms associated with COVID-19, while over 90% knew the
different ways of disease transmission. Our participants had mixed
answers about the times that COVID-19 can stay on different surfaces and
the distance required to achieve physical distancing. Over 80% of our
participants expressed positive attitude towards the emerging pandemic.
A negative correlation between knowledge and attitude scores (r=-0.21,
p<0.001) was noted. Conclusions: Syrian pharmacists expressed
good knowledge and positive attitude towards COVID-19. This can provide
a good support to the challenged Syrian healthcare system. The study
showed a need to provide reliable and updated resource for knowledge for
pharmacists that is administered by Syrian health authorities.