Covid 19: Determination of the Relationship between Sex, Having Handkerchief or Staying Indoor and Facial Touch

Background: Covid-19 outbreak is the current pandemic confronting nations in the world. The virus had caused so much loss of lives, loss of jobs and serious damages to global economy. One major way of preventing the spread of the virus and guide against being infected is to avoid face touching with unwashed hand(s).

Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the association between sex, having handkerchief or staying indoor and number of time a person touches face (mouth, eyes or nose).

Methodology: A sample size of n = 130 people were randomly selected and observed obliviously for 120 seconds. The number of times they touched their faces were recorded with other variables like sex, having handkerchief and staying indoor or outdoor. Since the response variable is count, appropriate models for such data were used.

Results and Conclusion: The Poisson results shown that there exist overdispersion, hence, a model that can account for the dispersion parameter was used to obtain accurate results. The results of the analysis shown that there is no association between the number of time a person touches face and sex, having handkerchief or staying indoor. The expected number time people touch their faces within 120 seconds is twice while the minimum and maximum number of times are zero and eight respectively.

Recommendation: It is recommended that there ought to be adequate public enlightenment and sensitization on the peril of the novel COVID-19 pandemic and the reason why individuals ought to stick carefully to the exhortation of abstaining from touching of faces (without washing with soap and water) so as to forestall its spread. If a person's hands are contaminated with the virus, he/she isn't infected until he/she touches the face (nose, eye or mouth) with the hands unwashed.