INTRODUCTION
According to the WHO report, the first cases of novel pneumonia with
unknown etiology were reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan City,
Hubei Province of China. One week later, Chinese authorities identified
a new type of coronavirus as causal agent of the disease (WHO, 2019).
This novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly around
the world. On 11 March 2020, WHO declared the outbreak a global pandemic
(CDC, 2020b; WHO, 2020c). The first cases of infection were identified
in Iran on 19 February 2020(WHO, 2020b). After that, the rate of the
disease has increased rapidly in the country, so that on 18 May 2020,
over 122,000 cases of the disease and about 7000 deaths have been
reported(Worldmeters.info, 2020).
The disease can mainly transmit through contact with respiratory and
saliva droplets and also objects and surfaces contaminated to the
droplets. According to the transmission routes, implementing the basic
preventive measures by the public plays the most important role in
infection prevention and control of the COVID-19 (Peng et al., 2020;
WHO, 2020d). Effective public awareness of correct information on the
COVID-19 outbreak through a variety of media is crucial to achieve a
suitable practice of the protective measures by the public. On the other
hand, one of the major challenges in preventing and controlling COVID-19
has been the proliferation of misinformation on social media (Frenkel,
Alba, & Zhong, 2020; Pennycook, McPhetres, Zhang, & Rand, 2020).
Propagation of this misinformation via popular messengers among the
community has confused the public in adopting the correct preventive
measures and has plagued the scientific community (Mian & Khan, 2020).
Kouzy et al. provided the definition of misinformation as a “claim of
fact that is currently false due to lack of scientific evidence (Kouzy
et al., 2020). The lack of evidence and unproven results of some studies
have also led to controversy among the public and even scientific
community about disease-related issues such as the use of masks, the
type and concentration of disinfectants, and transmission rout which
ultimately may change the public behavior (Eikenberry et al., 2020;
Huynh, 2020).
In recent years, the number of Internet users in Iran has grown (over
80% penetration rate). According to datareportal.com (Digital-2019-
Iran), more than 47 million of Iranian (̴ 57%) are active users of
social networks (Kemp, 2019). Hence, Iranian users are known as one of
the biggest users of social networks in the world (Honari, 2015).
Undoubtedly, one of the main ways to obtain information and knowledge
about health issues like COVID-19 has been social networks. Assessment
of knowledge and attitude of the public will help to prevent or reduce
the uncoordinated social behavior in such special conditions as COVID-19
epidemic. Generally, different aspects of knowledge, attitude, and
practices (KAP) affect Health-related behavior in any kind of society
(Launiala, 2009).
Several KAP surveys have been conducted regarding various viral disease
outbreaks around the world, such as the Studies on Ebola Virus Disease
(EVD) in Nigeria (Iliyasu et al., 2015), Sudan (Alfaki, Salih, Elhuda,
& Egail, 2016), and Iran (Holakouie-Naieni et al., 2015), on Middle
East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus (MERS-CoV) in Saudi Arabia
(Al-Hazmi, Gosadi, Somily, Alsubaie, & Saeed, 2018; Nour, Babilghith,
Natto, Al-Amin, & Alawneh, 2015), on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
(SARS) in Qatar (Bener & Al-Khal, 2004) and Singapore (Vijaya et al.,
2004) and also on Avian Influenza in China(Xiang et al., 2010) and
Influenza A in India (Kamate et al., 2010). This kind of survey will
help the decision-makers and health authorities to upgrade their
educational programs in combating the crisis of outbreaks.