Treatment Seeking Behavior for COVID-19 Symptoms Among Northern Iranian Population: A Cross-sectional Study

Background: early detection of individual suspected to covid-19 and contact tracing isnecessary for infection control.objectives: this study was conducted to investigate the treatment seeking behavior forcovid-19 symptoms among northern iranian population and its related factors.materials & methods: this hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted to investigatethe treatment seeking behavior for covid-19 symptoms and its related factors in 602 confirmedcovid-19 cases for a period of 2 months between march and may 2020 in guilan at the onsetof the corona epidemic in iran.results: professional treatment-seeking was observed in 18.6% of patients and most of patientreported home remedies (50.3%) and self-medication (31.1%) as first reaction to covid-19symptoms. the most prevalent symptoms of covid-19 in the study population were anosmia(98.3%) and fever (70.1%). the multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that patientswith breathing difficulties symptom and history of respiratory disease had greater odds professionaltreatment of seeking respectively (adjusted odds ratio (or)=1.6, p=0.03, or=3.3, p=0.001).conclusion: roughly half of symptomatic covid-19 patient reported home remedies asfirst treatment-seeking behaviors and only breathing difficulties symptom and past history ofrespiratory disease were identified as an independent predictor of professional treatment–seeking.we will certainly face pandemics in the future. however, the world must obviously prepare forfuture pandemics in light of the lessons learnt from the covid-19 pandemic. we hope that theresults of this study can be a lesson for the future.