Abstract
As the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) continues to occur in small outbreaks in Saudi Arabia, we aimed to assess the knowledge, attitudes and intended practices of healthcare workers (HCWs) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic and compare worry levels with previous findings during the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015. We sent an adapted version of our previously published MERS-CoV questionnaire to the same cohort of HCWs at a tertiary hospital in Saudi Arabia. About 40% of our sample had previous experience with confirmed or suspected MERS-CoV patients, and those had a significantly higher knowledge score (13.16 +/- 2.02vs.12.58 +/- 2.27,P= 0.002) and higher adherence to protective hygienic practices (2.95 +/- 0.80vs.2.74 +/- 0.92,P= 0.003). The knowledge scores on COVID-19 were higher in the current cohort than the previous MERS-CoV outbreak cohort (68%vs.79.7%,P< 0.001). HCWs from the current cohort who felt greater anxiety from COVID-19 compared to MERS-CoV were less likely to have been exposed to MERS-CoV infected/suspected cases (odds ratio (OR) = 0.646,P= 0.042) and were less likely to have attended the hospital awareness campaign on COVID-19 (OR = 0.654,P= 0.035). We concluded that previous experience with MERS-CoV was associated with increased knowledge and adherence to protective hygienic practices, and reduction of anxiety towards COVID-19.