Damian Sendler: An entirely new coronavirus has been discovered and efforts have been made to develop vaccines for it. Many factors play a role in people’s willingness to receive vaccinations. As a result, the focus of our review was on vaccine hesitancy in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in relation to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Damian Jacob Sendler: Vaccine hesitancy, according to the WHO, is a behavior influenced by a variety of factors, including lack of trust in the vaccine or the provider, laziness, and a lack of value for the vaccine (access). Those who are hesitant to get vaccinated come in all shapes and sizes, and there is no one size fits all when it comes to vaccines. All vaccines may be accepted by those who are hesitant about vaccines, while others may refuse or delay some vaccines but accept others.1
Dr. Sendler: Wuhan, China’s seafood wholesale market was linked to a cluster of patients who developed pneumonia in December 2019. By sequencing the entire genome of patient samples, a new coronavirus was discovered. 2 An international committee on the taxonomy of viruses dubbed it SARS-CoV-2, and the disease caused by it was dubbed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the World Health Organization.
After infecting and killing thousands of people in China, the virus has spread to Italy, other European countries, and the United States, with the number of confirmed new cases increasing daily. Since the disease was highly contagious and easily spread, the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic.
Much effort has gone into developing vaccines against COVID-19 in order to stave off a pandemic, and the majority of vaccine candidates are based on vaccine candidates using the S-protein from SARS-CoV-2,5.
Three vaccines have been approved and are currently recommended for the prevention of COVID-19. The United States is also conducting or planning large-scale clinical trials (phase 3) for other COVID-19 vaccines. Nos. 6 and 7
Health care workers, as well as the general population, must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of new infections.
Other studies have shown that vaccine trials for HPV and HIV vaccines in Europe and the United States have a significant impact on the willingness of people to get vaccinated.
Public trust in public health authorities, science, and medicine may vary widely from country to country, depending on the severity of the health and socioeconomic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis and the intensity of controversies.
Concerns about vaccine safety and efficacy, as well as a large segment of the population who refuses vaccinations, have contributed to many Americans’ unwillingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19.12.
Some 25% of people in five surveys in France (representative samples of 1000 adults) stated they would refuse a future vaccine against it if it were available, mainly due to safety concerns around an emergency vaccine developed in an emergency situation.
In order to better understand vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic and specifically vaccine hesitancy toward the COVID-19 vaccine, we conducted a narrative review.
Just 86.1 percent of participants in an Italian study (Barello et al.) chose to be vaccinated against COVID-19, which was the highest percentage of vaccine acceptance. According to Detoc et al., only 77.6 percent of the general population stated that they would accept the COVID-19 vaccine if given the opportunity. Despite the fact that each study was conducted at a different time period, the percentages remained fairly consistent.
Damian Sendler
There is a similar situation with influenza vaccine: the highest acceptance rate was reported by Grech et al. (69 percent), but only 54.3 percent of parents were favorable to vaccinate their children and 58.3 percent intended to vaccinate themselves in the only study that exclusively focused on influenza vaccine (Goldman et al.).
The review’s point-to-point analysis of factors influencing acceptance or rejection is one of its most intriguing aspects. As Williams et al. reported, despite extensive investigation into the reasons why parents choose to delay or refuse vaccinations for their children, the reasons for vaccine delay or refusal may change over time. 30
According to our findings, there was a lower acceptance rate for people of African descent. According to another study, African Americans were more skeptical and concerned about the flu vaccine than their white counterparts. 31
However, Pogue et al. found that income had no effect on attitudes toward vaccination, despite our findings. In addition, the acceptance rate was lower among participants with lower levels of education (except for the study conducted in Turkey by Salali et al.). While Danis et alstudy .’s found a correlation between vaccine hesitancy and economic hardship, no correlation was found between this correlation and vaccine refusal. Parents who were less educated than their children were more likely to refuse all vaccines, but hesitancy did not appear to be related to parental education. 32
It was not statistically significant that caregivers from households in the third or fourth quintiles were more likely than those in the other quintiles to fully immunize their children in another survey.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: A higher level of education was found to be a protective factor against vaccine reluctance. Other studies, on the other hand, did not agree on this correlation, with some being in agreement,34, 35 or showing no significant association. 37 Select sources of information can be used by parents with higher education backgrounds who are more critical thinkers and more engaged in their children’s education. 38
We found that religiosity had a negative correlation with the vaccination of COVID-19. In other studies, it was found that some people refused vaccinations because of their religious beliefs, such as the belief that God doesn’t take medicine or that vaccines are associated with Satanism. 39
People who identified as Democrats were significantly more likely to choose vaccination over those who identified as Republicans or Libertarians, while those who did not vote or did not identify with any political party were significantly more likely to reject vaccination. In addition, those who voted for candidates from the extreme left or right of the political spectrum were significantly more likely to refuse vaccination. Previously, Kennedy et al. observed that the support for populist parties could be used as a proxy for vaccine hesitancy, at least in the Western European context, and an increase in support was a signal for public health actors to be vigilant.
Damian Jacob Sendler
Female applicants had a lower acceptance rate than male applicants in our survey. Women are more likely than men to express concerns about vaccine safety and lack confidence in the accuracy and objectivity of medical information, as evidenced by other studies. 41
As a result of our investigation, we discovered three seemingly unrelated phenomena: 1) lower vaccination willingness was associated with younger age (2) those who were highly concerned about infection were less likely to refuse vaccination (3) there was no difference observed between those who had been infected and those who had not been infected. People with low risk perception are more likely to engage in risky behaviors or reduce their efforts to prevent them, so it’s important to keep this in mind. 42 COVID-19 can spread more easily in young people (such as college students, as reported by Ding et al.) because they tend to be healthy and have mild symptoms after being infected with COVID-19. 43 According to Ding et al., it’s possible that college students may refuse vaccinations due to a lack of risk perception, so health education in various ways should be implemented in an effort to improve the risk perception of college students. 43
Contrary to popular belief, healthcare workers are more likely to accept vaccines than non-healthcare workers or students. However, studies by Dror et al. found no differences in vaccine acceptance between healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers. According to the European Centre for Disease Control, healthcare workers have expressed concerns about the risks of vaccination and a lack of trust in the health authorities, which have been extensively studied. Even some doctors and nurses were opposed to vaccination. 44
As a result of these factors, vaccine refusal was more common than vaccination acceptance. The most common reasons given for vaccine refusal were: general antipathy to vaccines, concerns about safety/thinking that a vaccine produced hastily is too dangerous, deeming the vaccine useless due to COVID-19’s harmless nature, lack of trust in general, uncertainty about vaccine effectiveness, conviction that one is already immunized, uncertainty about vaccine provenance.
Damien Sendler: There is a strong correlation between these findings and findings from other studies. People’s fear of being injected incorrectly or getting infected, as well as their fear of pain, have all been documented by Pugliese-Garcia et al in a survey they conducted. 39 In many cases, vaccine efficacy was based on misinformation about how, for whom, and how long vaccines were effective. Vaccines were viewed as a preventative measure, rather than a treatment for a specific disease, by those surveyed. 39 The most common reason for vaccine refusal, according to Alabbad et al, was the belief that vaccines had no positive effect and were unnecessary. 28
Parents and medical professionals surveyed by Krishnamoorthy et al. reported that social media rumors about the vaccine’s safety were the primary source of their concerns. However, they didn’t verify the authenticity of the message before sending it out to friends, family, and other members of the local community. However, the use of multiple media channels to spread awareness has helped to overcome these obstacles. 45
Even in some studies, some participants preferred informal, traditional, and religious methods of preventing and curing disease. In addition to beer, spirits, and local alcoholic beverages like Tujilijili, Junta, and Kachasu, some young men also drank herbs, herbal teas, and tattoed themselves, according to the participants.
Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine hesitancy persists, and the reasons for vaccine refusals are numerous. As a result of people’s growing reluctance to get immunized, coverage rates drop, which in turn increases the risk of an infectious disease outbreak. 40
Health care professionals, particularly primary care physicians and pediatricians, should play a role in helping people make informed decisions about vaccinations.
46-47% Researchers have begun to develop and evaluate interventions for vaccine-hesitant people, but the current data do not support one method of intervention as being more effective than others; therefore, further development and evaluation of interventions are required.
