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1. Introduction
In December 2019, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emerged as a pandemic initiated in Wuhan city, China, which threatened the world’s population health (Bedford et al., 2020; Deng and Peng, 2020; Li et al., 2020; Phelan et al., 2020). COVID-19 is a disease that has been evolving and has exacerbated from a coronavirus to an acute respiratory syndrome (Malik et al., 2020; Strunk et al., 2014). However, the common symptoms of COVID-19 are abrupt onset of fever, for 44%–98% of patients; 68%–76% of patients have a non-productive cough; 18% of Coronavirus patients have accompanying fatigue (Kliger and Silberzweig, 2020).
Previous researchers have recognized other symptoms that could be used as risk measurements of a COVID-19 infection such as sore throat, headache and myalgia (Ahmed and Ali, 2019; Anusha, 2018; Strunk et al., 2014). Aging and chronic diseases such as diabetes, organ and coagulation dysfunction, hypertension and neutrophilia were deemed as risk factors that exacerbate COVID-19 complications (Afzal et al., 2020; Ahmed and Ali, 2019; Deng and Peng, 2020; Sari et al., 2020). COVID-19 patients gradually develop respiratory distress syndrome, which, in turn, raises the chance of death (Carter et al., 2020; Kliger and Silberzweig, 2020; Malik et al., 2020; Strunk et al., 2014).
As of August 16, 2020, the aggregate of infected patients worldwide reached more than 21 million confirmed cases and 761,779 reported deaths; the COVID-19 pandemic now has reached more than 200 countries across the world. In Oman, there have been 126,240 infected cases and 1,471 confirmed deaths by mid of December 2020 (WHO, 2020a). Because of that, a debate has been recently developed on what people know about COVID-19 symptoms, infection and pertinent risk, as well as prevention (Deng and Peng, 2020; Kandel et al., 2020; Venkatesan et al., 2019; WHO, 2020a). On the other hand, the literature shows that behavioral differentiation is remarkably evident among various cultures, based on observable studies of their responses in dealing with the pandemic outbreak (Qian et al., 2020; Rogers et al., 2018). Moreover, containment of COVID-19 from the outbreak in Oman is critically affected by individuals’ knowledge of this pandemic (Abdelfattah et al., 2015; Deng and Peng, 2020;...