Assessing the level of knowledge and perception among malaysian university students towards covid-19

Background: Coronavirus 2019 or CoVid-19 is a new strain of virus from the coronaviridae family which was first detected in Wuhan, China. CoVid-19 has been declared as a world pandemic with approximately 100,000 cases and 14,000 fatalities across 100 countries worldwide. Aim of the Study: The objective of this research is to assess the level of awareness, knowledge, and perception of CoVid-19 among students of university considering the recent outbreak. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted. Stratified random sampling was used as respondents were divided into medical and non-medical strata. Questionnaires were distributed to 300 students from 6 different faculties and the results were analyzed. Results: Our results indicated that gender, ethnicity, and type of courses do not hold statistical significance against the knowledge and perception of CoVid-19. There is a significant association though between ethnicity and awareness to CoVid-19 (p = 0.021) and between gender and awareness to CoVid-19 (p = 0.002). Conclusion: The outcome of this study proves our hypothesis that there is no significant association in the level of knowledge and perception towards CoVid-19 between the medical and non-medical students of the university.