Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb 27:10:62.
doi: 10.4103/jehp.jehp_910_20. eCollection 2021.

COVID-19 and the "Stay at home" recommendation: An ethnographic study

Amirahmad Shojaei  1 , Pooneh Salari  2
Affiliations

COVID-19 and the "Stay at home" recommendation: An ethnographic study

Amirahmad Shojaei et al. J Educ Health Promot. .

Abstract

Background: Facing a devastating infectious outbreak like COVID-19, the command of "stay at home" was recommended by some officials as a self-voluntary quarantine strategy for controlling the outbreak, but the people perceived and act differently. In this study, we aimed at ethnographic evaluation of public response to this command.

Materials and methods: This research used ethnography for observing the public response to the recommendation of "stay at home" in the COVID-19 outbreak. Data were collected via observing public behavior and documentation; then, the data were qualitatively analyzed.

Results: Our findings showed 10 different ignored dimensions in this moral statement including lack of legal and administrative support, diverse perception and contradictory reactions of the people to the epidemiological forecasting and recommendations, different response to moral statements, various perceptions of the people about health and wellbeing, feeling exhausted of staying at home, not including justice and fairness in the moral statement, not clarifying the meaning of necessary matters, not considering the COVID-19 infected patients and their requirements, assigning the responsibility of government to the public, and halting other scientific activities and investigations in charge of COVID-19.

Conclusions: Taken together, the officials should take an active role in implementing this moral statement by strict regulations, public education about the disease, its control, and the importance of quarantine, considering justice and fairness in implementation.

Keywords: COVID-19; ethics; public health; self-quarantine.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The schematic view of the challenges of stay at home recommendation
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report-105. [Last accessed on 2020 May 05]. Available from: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/sitation-reports/20... .
    1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Quarantine and Isolation. [Last accessed on 2020 May 03]. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/index.html .
    1. Kilic R, Ataman Hatipoglu C, Gunes C. Quarantine and its legal dimension. Turk J Med Sci. 2020;50:544–8. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Tognotti E. Lessons from the history of quarantine, from plague to influenza A. Emerg Infect Dis. 2013;19:254–9. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gostin Lo, Hodge JG., Jr US emergency legal responses to novel coronavirus: Balancing public health and civil liberties. JAMA. 2020;323:1131–2. - PubMed