Infection control behavior at home during the COVID-19 pandemic: observational study of a web-based behavioral intervention (germ defence)

Abstract

Background: to control the COVID-19 pandemic, people should adopt protective behaviours at home (self-isolation, social distancing, putting shopping/packages aside, wearing face-covering, cleaning and disinfecting, handwashing). There is currently limited support to help individuals conduct these behaviours.

Objective: we aimed to report current household infection control behaviours in the UK, and examine how they might be improved.

Methods: this was a pragmatic, cross-sectional observational study of anonymous participant data from Germ Defence (https://germdefence.org/), a freely available website providing behavioural advice for infection control within households. 28,285 users sought advice from four website pathways based on household status (advice 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). Users reported current infection control behaviours within the home, and intentions to change these behaviours.

Results: current behaviours 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 handwashing is much higher. Advice using behaviour change techniques in Germ Defence led to intentions to improve these behaviours. Promoting Germ Defence within national and local public health/primary care guidance could reduce COVID-19 transmission.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Sascha Miller: orcid.org/0000-0002-1949-5774

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

ORCID for Beth Stuart: orcid.org/0000-0001-5432-7437

ORCID for Kate Morton: orcid.org/0000-0002-6674-0314

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

ORCID for Michael Moore: orcid.org/0000-0002-5127-4509

ORCID for Merlin 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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