Mask-Wearing, Testing, and Knowledge of COVID-19 in Cox's Bazar, 2020 [Bangladesh]

The Rohingya population settled in 34 camps in Cox's Bazar district numbers around 860,000 individuals.1 On March 23, 2020, Cox's Bazar saw the first case of COVID-19 in the host community. The first case of COVID19 in the Rohingya population was confirmed on 14 May 2020. At the time of this survey (September 5th - 10th 2020), there were 138 confirmed cases and 8 confirmed deaths from COVID19 in the Rohingya camps.

Community engagement around prevention of COVID19 has been a core activity of the health sector since March and is supported by many other sectors. Activities are carried out by volunteers through door-door messaging and the use of multimedia approaches, key messages were developed by the risk communication group including the need for physical distancing, mask wearing, recognizing symptoms, and testing and treatment.

The assessment was designed to assess the effectiveness of the intense community engagement that has been done among the Rohingya population; whether people were absorbing and developing good knowledge from the communication and information outreach, and whether they were responding (through behavior change) to the information they were receiving.