Mariam Eid Alanzi¹, Mona Ali H Albalawi², Saeed Kabrah³, Yasmeen Talal Aljehani⁴, Ahmed M. Okashah⁵, Zohoor Dahi E Aljohani⁶, Rehab Ismail H Alribyawi⁷, Sultan Ahmed H Alluqmany⁸, Khalid Eid Alanzi⁹, Nusaybah Eid Alanazi¹⁰, Rehab A. Eltahlawi^{11, 12}, Mohamed Abdel-Haleem¹³, Amr El-Dardear¹⁴, Salah Mohamed El Sayed^{15, 16,}

This research study aims at investigating knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAPs) of healthcare workers towards the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), also known as camel flu, caused by the MERS-CoV coronavirus. The present study focuses on the Hajj season in 2019 in the city of Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah in Saudi Arabia as it is one of the most beloved cities for Muslim pilgrims who keep visiting its famous and lovely prophetic Mosque (Al-Masjid Al-Nabawi). For that, almost 500.000 visitors come to Al-Madinah everyday. Most of the year, the prophetic Masjid is crowded from inside and the crowdedness expands to include the mosque’s piazzas and even the streets outside the masjid. Unfortunately, overcrowdedness is a risk factor for transmitting many serious respiratory diseases as MERS-CoV. Also, this study is an effort to obtain significant insights and to evaluate the health practices among healthcare workers particularly in the primary healthcare domain. Data collection involves a survey questionnaire distributed to all healthcare workers participating in care delivery during the Hajj season 1440 hijri calendar (2019 Gregorian calendar). Participants were medical students, physicians and nurses at Taibah University, King Fahd hospital and primary healthcare centers (PHCs) taking into account the work experience duration and the study level. MERS-CoV viruses are enveloped RNA viruses that fall into six strains. MERS-CoV viruses cause zoonotic diseases belonging to the gamma genus of corona viruses. MERS CoV infection may be caused by droplet, close patients contact and exposure to camels. March–May period is the season of greatest disease transmission. Incubation period is 3-4 days with respiratory and renal symptoms and subclinical infection. The questionnaire investigated all this basic medical knowledge about MERS-CoV. Responses collected from the questionnaire were analyzed using SPSS where percent reliability was calculated. Results revealed that the current knowledge of health care personnel needs to be augmented and updated for improving the common goal of declining the transmission rates of MERS-CoV.

MERS-CoV, KAPs, primary care, epidemiology, educational intervention, questionnaire