A snapshot of public knowledge of novel coronavirus disease 2019: a web-based national survey

Background Although the number of existing cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China has been decreasing since late February 2020, the number of confirmed cases abroad is surging. Improving public knowledge of COVID-19 is critical to controlling the pandemic. This study aimed to determine China’s public knowledge of COVID-19 and the attitudes towards control measures. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted over 48 h from 22:30 29 February 2020 to 22:30 2 March 2020 based on a self-administered web-based questionnaire. The survey was conducted on the WeChat network. Exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling was applied. The questionnaire was voluntarily completed by WeChat users. The questionnaire covered basic demographic information, public knowledge of the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19, psychological state, and attitudes towards the overall control measures. The primary outcome was the China’s public knowledge of COVID-19 and the attitudes towards control measures and secondary outcome was the psychological state of the public during this pandemic. Results The study included 10,905 participants and 10,399 valid questionnaires were included for analysis. Participants with tertiary education, younger participants and healthcare workers had better overall knowledge than other participants (all P < 0.05). Approximately 91.9% of the participants believed in person-to-person transmission and 39.1% believed in animal-to-person transmission. No significant correlation between anxiety and the number of regional existing confirmed cases was found, while participants in Hubei were more anxious than those in other regions. In general, 74.1% of the participants acknowledged the effectiveness of the overall control measures, and the percentage of participants with agreement with the overall control measures was negatively correlated with the number of regional existing confirmed cases ( r = − 0.492, P = 0.007). Conclusions In conclusion, the survey revealed that the Chinese public had overall good knowledge of COVID-19 except for those indeterminate knowledges. With dynamic changes in the global pandemic situation and more research, further studies should be conducted to explore changes in public knowledge and attitudes towards COVID-19 in the future. The media could be used in a strict and regular manner to publicize knowledge of such pandemics to halt their spread. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-10495-4.