Knowledge of and attitudes toward COVID-19 among parents of child dental patients during the outbreak

The aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge of and attitudes toward coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among the parents of child dental patients in Shenzhen during the outbreak. A structured questionnaire containing 10 questions was used, and each question had 2 or 3 possible answers. The parents of children (aged 0-14 years) who visited the dental department of our hospital last year were eligible to participate in this study. A total of 148 parents were interviewed by telephone in February 2020 by research staff. A total of 94.59% of the parents said they paid high attention to COVID-19 and explained it to their children; 66.22% thought the dental department environment was more dangerous than other public places; 91.89% believed the dental department had a higher risk of virus infection; and 83.78% said they would take their children to a dental department if the children had a severe toothache. Approximately 81.08% of the parents expressed confidence after we informed them about the preventive measures taken in the dental department to ensure safe treatment for their children. In conclusion, all parents were concerned about COVID-19, and most of them had talked about it with their children often. In addition, a considerable percentage of them would not take their children to the dental department even if they had severe dental pain and thought that the dental environment could be more dangerous than other environments. More information about this topic should be delivered to this population.