Our study describes the types and acceptance of glove wearing practice during local COVID-19 outbreak. The prevalence of glove wearing was 2.3% of the observed study population. We were not able to compare the prevalence of our study population as there are no other studies which have reported the glove use among the non-healthcare population.

Although the prevalence of glove use among our study population was small, undeniably the uptake of the use of glove among the general population has increased due to COVID-19 outbreak. There have been reports of substantial increase in the use of PPE both in community and healthcare settings once the local outbreak begins [24–26]. Public perception on the necessity to wear PPE was fuelled by media coverage of graphic pictures of civilian, authorities and health care personnel wearing extensive personal protective equipment (PPE) During the early stage of the outbreak [27]. reports of SARS-CoV-2 virus originating from wet market and reports of SARS-CoV-2 virus detected on surfaces in patient rooms [28] might have encouraged glove wearing practice.

As SARS-CoV-2 virus transmitted predominantly by droplets, local health authorities recommendation of facemask use in the public location was universally headed, evidently as facemask coverage of 96.9%-99.7% among local population was reported [29, 30]. Similarly, the low proportion of glove use could be contributed by the recommendation against use of glove by local health authorities [31] which is similar to stand taken by other public healthcare agencies such as World Health Organisation [21], healthcare service executive of Ireland [22] and Centre for disease prevention and control (CDC, USA)[23].

Although the use of glove among general population is negligible, unacceptable glove practice among individuals visiting wet market (30.0%) and hospital (8.9%) raises the question on the necessity of glove use in community setting. To date, there are no clinical evidence accepting or refuting the benefit of glove wearing among public in relation to Covid-19 pandemic. However, anecdotal evidence does not support the benefit of glove use outside medical setting. In addition, various doctors have cautioned that use of glove might provide false sense of security and divert attention from the importance of washing hands[18, 31, 32]. This is in concord with little evidence that wearing gloves in public offers protection from contracting the virus. While intentions are good, the indiscriminate wearing of gloves of general public is largely ineffective and may lead to more harm than good. If needed, the compliance to proper glove wearing could be improved through targeted public health education[33, 34].

We found that higher proportion of male was using medical grade glove (78.8%) compared to non-medical grade glove (21.2%).The higher proportion of medical grade glove use among male were likely due to the widespread news of higher risk of mortality among male gender[35–37], with reports of Males are 1.85 times (OR: 1.85, 95% CI 1.60–2.13) more likely to die from COVID-19 infection [38]. This high risk of death among male gender might have promoted extra protection seeking behaviour among this group of patients. This is evident as not only we have observed universal facemask practice among our study population, we also have observed higher proportion (68.3%) of individual using medical grade glove was using medical grade facemask as well. Although the use of glove is in individual dependent, the mental wellbeing contributing to glove usage should not be neglected[39]. For example, Lin et al. correlated all-time high search for “face mask” in Google could be a sign of anxiety appearing in the society[40]. Szczesniak et al. and teams findings imply that in addition of protection against the COVID-19, the use of facemask also increase the level of perceived self-protection and of social solidarity which, thereby improve mental health wellbeing[41] similar to Correspondence of Shannon L et al have described similar sense increased morale within her department and promoted buy-in to the use of PPE [42]. Though glove use was not recommended, public might still chose to wear glove to boost morale or sense of protection.

Based on the above evidence, hand hygiene, together with appropriate personal protective equipment, is of utmost importance to break the cycle of touching contaminated environmental surfaces and subsequent inoculation of the virus through touching mucous membranes, thus reducing the risk of transmission of COVID-19.

The finding our study might be biased due to the study location. Wet markets and hospitals are generally perceived as a high risk location for SARS-CoV-2 virus transmission. Thus, visitors to such location might have taken extra precaution such as wearing glove which might not be practiced in other circumstance. Besides that, the availability and price of glove on market could have greatly influenced subject’s preference.