Evaluating the Effects of Common Health Instructions and Proceedings on COVID-19 Prevention

Introduction: some health instructions and proceedings were widely broadcasted and advised by scientific centers and social media concerning coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) prevention, in the early days of the epidemic. almost all of them had been sourced from narrative statements or non-evidence based sciences. herein, we intended to deeply investigate the usefulness and efficiency of such recommendation on covid-19 prevention. materials and methods: ninety-seven reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) confirmed positive covid-19 individuals as case and 103 suffering from other diseases as control group were enrolled. to collect the data, an expert validated questionnaire encompassed demographic information, past medical history and pre-infection preventive proceedings (consumption of vitamin d3, c, and zinc supplement, wearing face masks and gloves, hand washing, keeping at least 1.5 m distance with other people and staying at home) was used. the data between two groups were analyzed using spss software version 16. results: no significant difference was obtained in zinc consumption between case and control groups (14 (14.4%) vs 16 (15.5%), or=0.88, ci= 0.66-1.31). consumption of vitamins d3 and c was significantly higher in patients suffering from covid-19 compared to non-covid-19 patients, [(60 (61.9%) vs 47 (45.6%), or=1.28, ci=1.12-1.48) for vitamin d3 and (54 (52.4%) vs 47 (48.4%), or=1.15, ci=1.01=1.31)]. hand and face hygiene was significantly more observed in non-covid-19 patients group (77 (79.3%) vs 96 (93.2%), or=0.82, ci=0.71-0.93). home quarantine and keeping social distance were also significantly higher in non-covid-19 patients group. conclusions: general protective proceedings have significant protective roles against covid-19.