Current infection control behaviour patterns in the UK, and how they can be improved by 'Germ Defence', an online behavioural intervention to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the home.

Abstract

Background: Germ Defence (https://germdefence.org/) is a freely available website providing behavioural advice for infection control within households, using behaviour change techniques. This observational study reports current infection control behaviours in the home in UK and international users of the website, and examine how they might be improved to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Method: 28,285 users sought advice from four website pathways (to protect themselves generally, to protect others if the user was showing symptoms, to protect themselves if household members were showing symptoms, and to protect a household member who is at high risk) and completed outcome measures of current infection control behaviours within the home (self-isolation, social distancing, putting shopping/packages aside, wearing face-covering, cleaning and disinfecting, handwashing), and intentions to change these behaviours.
Results: Current user behaviours mean scores varied across all infection control measures but were between 'sometimes' and 'quite often', except handwashing ('very often'). Behaviours were similar regardless of the website pathway used. After using Germ Defence, users recorded intentions to improve infection control behaviour across all website pathways and for all behaviours.
Conclusions: Self-reported infection control behaviours other than handwashing are lower than is optimal for infection prevention, although reported handwashing is much higher. The advice using behaviour change techniques in Germ Defence led to intentions to improve these behaviours. This has been shown previously to reduce the incidence, severity and transmission of infections. These findings suggest that promoting Germ Defence within national and local public health guidance could reduce COVID-19 transmission.</jats:p>

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ben Ainsworth: orcid.org/0000-0002-5098-1092

ORCID for James Denison-Day: orcid.org/0000-0003-0223-0005

ORCID for Lauren Towler: orcid.org/0000-0002-6597-0927

ORCID for Merlin L. Willcox: orcid.org/0000-0002-5227-3444

ORCID for Paul Little: orcid.org/0000-0003-3664-1873

ORCID for Lucy Yardley: orcid.org/0000-0002-3853-883X

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