Background: COVID-19 is an ongoing global pandemic situation. Governments have ordered everyone to remain at home as an emergency measure and implemented school closures to prevent further spread of the infection. Under such situation children’s behaviour, particularly oral health behaviour and sedentary behaviour may have been drastically impacted and are of significant concern. So, this study was aimed to investigate the impact of lockdown and inter-related factors on the behavioural profile of children aged 4-12 years.
Methods: The current study is the first nationwide representative study to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on oral health behaviour and sedentary behaviour of children in India from the perspective of parent. A representative online survey was conducted among 250 families with 4- to 12-year- old children between May 2nd to May 9.
Results: Children with low socioeconomic status, rural background, and very limited living space were affected significantly more. In oral health attitudes, respondents who had increased attention to oral health was more than those with decreased. Most of the children showed constant irritability and variable mood swings. Moreover, the children seemed to increase their use of screens, used to sleep more, and were less active physically. Concerning adaptation, most of the parents reported that their child was somehow able to adapt to restrictions of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Conclusions: The present study concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted the behavioural profile and oral health care of children in various regions and there is a need to reduce the psychological burden of this pandemic and the necessity of immediate intervention.