Medical students’ disease status of COVID-19: A multicenter study

Abstract

BACKGROUND. Ever since its insurgence and wide-scale spread, COVID-19 has proved to be a challenge for healthcare workers throughout the world. Efforts have been made to scale its incidence and prevalence, find out cure for it as well as preventive measures like vaccines. METHODS. This is a cross-sectional study in which a predesigned proforma was disseminated amongst the medical students of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. To gauge the status of COVID-19 amongst the medical students open-ended and close-ended questions were asked. These involved extracting demographics as well as information pertaining to signs and symptoms, hospital admission status and vaccination. RESULTS. A total of 605 medical students belonging to 16 different medical colleges responded. The frequency of COVID-19 was 31.4%, amongst the medical students. Students of clinical years were 1.31 times more likely to catch the infection than preclinical students. The self-isolation rate was 30.4%, hospital admission rate was 5%, and vaccination rate was 95%. The commonest presentation of COVID-19 was fever followed by fatigue and body aches. CONCLUSIONS. The status of COVID-19 in KPK medical students is comparable to the rest of the world. Hence, we can deduce that the safety measures taken by the government and the private health sectors are proving at par with the developed world.