**5. Conclusions**

This study is the first to highlight the knowledge and behavior of the people of the Okara district in Pakistan towards COVID-19. The study showed that while the knowledge and the perceived threat of COVID-19 were high among the citizens of Depalpur City, Pakistan, overall the attitudes and prevention practices of the participants were lower than expected including hand washing, the use of the face-covering in public, and social distancing. While the availability of the SARS-CoV-02 vaccine is extremely limited at this time, our study findings will provide important guidelines to assist in the continued slowing of the spread of COVID-19 and in finding ways for public health professionals to overcome pandemic fatigue.

Our study implies that the government public health agencies in Pakistan should not only do more awareness-raising and health education concerning prevention practices, but that they should also continue to try to galvanize compliance to prevention guidelines by explaining the benefits of compliance with the prevention guidelines issued by the World Health Organization, Pakistan Government, and public health agencies. Although the vaccine is not broadly available currently, in anticipation of its broader availability awareness-raising is imperative about the benefits of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for its acceptance. To counter vaccine resistance, public health agencies may also offer benefits such as free vaccination and paid leaves for government workers on days of vaccine appointments. Educational sessions may be organized through civil society organizations in order to increase the overall health literacy of people and, more specifically, to counter the false rumors and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 prevention, management of symptoms, and benefits and side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at https://www.mdpi.com/article/10 .3390/ijerph18136772/s1: Figure S1, Questionnaire in Urdu; Table S1, Comparison of Mean Score for the COVID-19 Prevention Behavior by Socio-Demographic Characteristics, Depalpur City, Pakistan, 2020.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, A.A.F., H.K., and G.H.S.; methodology, G.H.S.; software, G.H.S.; validation, A.A.F., H.K., and G.H.S.; formal analysis, A.A.F., G.H.S.; investigation, A.A.F., H.K.; resources, A.A.F., H.K., G.H.S., and K.C.W.; data curation, A.A.F. and H.K.; writing—original draft preparation, A.A.F., H.K., G.H.S., and K.C.W.; writing—review and editing, A.A.F., H.K., G.H.S., and K.C.W.; visualization, G.H.S. and H.K.; supervision, G.H.S.; project administration, G.H.S. and H.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Research and Ethics Committee of the Government College University [Protocol number GCU-IIB-380].

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to informed consent, assuring the participants that data will not be used for any other purpose other than presenting the findings in a summary form.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
