COMMUNITY KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES, AND BEHAVIOR TOWARDS SOCIAL DISTANCING POLICY AS PREVENTION TRANSMISSION OF COVID-19 IN INDONESIA

Background: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV2 recently became a pandemic worldwide, such as in Indonesia. Social distancing is one of the recommended mitigations to reduce the risk of disasters, such as morbidity and mortality caused by COVID-19. Community compliance with social distancing is a part of the pandemic control.Aims: This study identified knowledge, attitudes, and behavior towards the prevention of SARS-CoV-2 transmission through social distancing during COVID-19 pandemic among Indonesian community.Methods: This descriptive study applied a cross-sectional design and distributed closed questions with online questionnaire randomly to 34 provinces in Indonesia on social media networks and e-mail. This study successfully collected 1,102 respondents from 29 provinces in Indonesia. The data were analyzed descriptively by calculating frequency, percentage, and cross-tabulation.Results: This study had successfully identified 99%, 59%, and 93% of respondents with good knowledge, positive attitudes, and good behavior respectively towards social distancing. Among the respondents who had good knowledge showed positive attitudes (58.85%) and good behavior (93.3%). The respondents who had positive attitudes showed good behavior (96.7%).Conclusion: Indonesian community had good knowledge, attitude and behavior towards social distancing as a way to prevent the virus transmission. This strongly supports disaster mitigation in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. Keywords: attitudes, behavior, COVID-19, knowledge, social distancing