Majority of Filipinos have taken steps to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) since the beginning of the pandemic crisis, a Social Weather Station( SWS) survey said on Monday.

Based on their latest report, seventy-seven percent of working-age Filipinos, aged 15 years old and above have always use a face mask when going out of their houses, 68 percent always wash their hands several times a day, and 64 percent always keep “social distance” or a safe distance of one meter from other people when outside their homes.

SWS said 77 percent said they always use a face mask when going out, 15 percent say most of the time, four percent sometimes, and two percent rarely while only 0.3 percent said they never wear face masks.

Sixty-eight percent said they always wash their hands several times a day, 27 percent said most of the time, four percent sometimes, and one percent rarely.

Sixty-four percent say they always keep “social distance” or a safe distance of one meter from other people every time they go outside, 19 percent say most of the time, nine percent sometimes, and six percent rarely while only 0.5 percent said they never observed social distancing.

“The proportion of those who always use a face mask hardly varies in Enhance Community Quarantine (ECQ) areas at 77 percent, and General Community Quarantine (GCQ) areas at 78 percent,” said SWS.

Majority of the people who wear face masks came from Visayas at 80 percent, followed by Mindanao at 79 percent, Metro Manila at 78 percent, and Balance Luzon at 75 percent.

“Those who always wash their hands are slightly higher in GCQ areas at 71 percent than in ECQ areas at 66 percent,” it said.

“They are also slightly higher in Mindanao at 74 percent and the Visayas at 73 percent, compared to Metro Manila at 68 percent and Balance Luzon at 63 percent,” it added.

Meanwhile, those who always observe “social distance” hardly vary in ECQ and GCQ areas, at 63 percent and 65 percent, respectively and highest in the Visayas at 69 percent, followed by Metro Manila at 67 percent, Mindanao at 64 percent, and Balance Luzon at 60 percent.

The SWS COVID-19 Mobile Phone Survey was conducted last May 4 to 10, using mobile phone and computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) of 4,010 working-age Filipinos nationwide.

SWS said the survey is non-commissioned.

“It was done on SWS's own initiative and released as a public service,” it said. Ella Dionisio/DMS