Open AccessAssessment of COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance among Health Care Workers and General Population - A Cross-Sectional Survey
Author(s) -
Arunkumar Radhakrishnan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of communicable diseases/journal of communicable diseases
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.151
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 2581-351X
pISSN - 0019-5138
DOI - 10.24321/0019.5138.202130
Subject(s) - medicine , cross sectional study , population , health care , family medicine , test (biology) , environmental health , paleontology , pathology , economics , biology , economic growth
This cross-sectional survey was conducted to estimate the proportion of participants among health care workers and general population who are willing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and those who are not, and to identify the reasons for vaccine hesitancy among the participants. Methods: Health care workers of a tertiary care hospital and the general population residing in the nearby areas of the tertiary care hospital were predominantly included in the study. A specific questionnaire was designed, validated, and administered to the participants after obtaining consent. Result: The responses were collected using Google Form and compiled in an excel sheet for analysis. The difference in opinion with regard to acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine was statistically analysed using Chi-square test. The vaccine acceptance rate was high among the general population (70.2%) as compared to health care workers (56.7%) (p = 0.0006, highly significant). The remaining proportions of participants (43.3% of health care workers and 29.8% of general population) were hesitant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Conclusion: The reasons for vaccine hesitancy were fear of harmful effects, doubtful efficacy, lack of transparency in clinical trials, and fast track vaccine development.