What Are the Greatest Concerns Among COVID-19 Vaccine-Hesitant Adults?
Now that shortages of COVID-19 vaccine is easing for many pharmacies, the focus has turned to persuading more people to get a shot. A new survey discusses the most common concerns, with a focus on occupation. It also points out that pharmacists have the lowest level of vaccine hesitancy among healthcare workers. Here is more information.
PITTSBURGH – Side effects are the greatest worry among the largest group of adults who report hesitancy to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. But they also express a variety of other concerns, many involving distrust of the government or others.
That’s according to a survey conducted by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, both in Pittsburgh, which also found that workers in certain occupations are much more hesitant than others.
Interestingly the study determined that, among health care workers, pharmacists had the lowest hesitancy at 8.5%.
An article published as a preprint on medRxiv discusses prevalence of and reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, overall and by employment and occupation among adults younger than 65.
The survey was administered on Facebook by the Delphi Group at Carnegie Mellon University in January, February and March. Each month, about 1.2 million U.S. residents from the Facebook Active User Base complete the survey.
Responses were used for the study from 791,716, 710,529, and 732,308 Facebook users, respectively over those months. Researchers made sure that weights matched the sample to the age, gender, and state profile of the U.S. population. . In March, for example, participants had a median age range of 35-44 years, 45% were male, 76.6% had some college education, and 63.8% were non-Hispanic white.
The survey suggests that vaccine hesitancy decreased among those adults from January (27.5% [95%CI, 27.3-27.6]) to March (22.1% [95%CI, 21.9-22.2]).
The authors also reveal that vaccine hesitancy varied widely by occupational category: 9.6%, (95%CI, 8.5-10.7) in life/physical/social sciences to 46.4% (95%CI, 45.1-47.7) in construction/extraction.
While nearly half -- 47.9%, 95%, 47.6-48.3 -- of participants reporting hesitancy expressed concern about side effects, more than a third didn’t believe they needed the vaccine, didn’t trust the government, were waiting to see if it was safe, and didn’t trust COVID-19 vaccines (vs. 14.5% [95%CI, 14.3-14.8] who didn’t like vaccines in general).
The authors caution that hesitancy, “which varies widely by occupation, remains a barrier to pandemic control. Reasons for hesitancy indicate messaging about safety and addressing trust are paramount.”
“Vaccine hesitancy is emerging as a key barrier to ending the COVID-19 pandemic,” said lead author Wendy C. King, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health. “Identifying occupations with a high rate of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and understanding the reasons for hesitancy can help public health practitioners and the health care community target interventions and address concerns to hopefully increase vaccination rates. Our study indicates that messaging about COVID-19 vaccine safety and addressing trust are paramount.”
The survey has varied over time and now collects “data on symptoms, illness, treatment, testing, behaviors like masking and distancing, and mental health,” explained senior author Robin Mejia, Ph.D., M.P.H., special faculty at the CMU Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “And it's continuing to evolve as new policy questions arise.”
On Jan. 6, a question was added to the survey about participants’ willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccine hesitant was defined as those respondents who said they “probably” or “definitely” would not choose to get vaccinated if offered a COVID-19 vaccine.
In terms of occupations and hesitancy, fewer than 10% of educators and people working in life, physical or social sciences were wary of the vaccine, but that was the case with 46.4% among workers in construction, oil and gas extraction or mining, followed closely by people in installation, maintenance, repair, farming, fishing or forestry careers.
Those in high-hesitancy occupations were more likely to report lack of trust in the COVID-19 vaccine and the government, disbelief about the need for the vaccine and dislike of vaccines in general. A much smaller percentage expressed concerns about side effects or an allergic reaction.
Among healthcare workers, in contrast to pharmacists, with a very low rate of hesitancy, medical assistants, emergency medical technicians and home health, nursing, psychiatric or personal-care aids had the highest hesitancy at 20.5%.
“These are the health care professions with some of the highest patient contact and occupations that have suffered workplace outbreaks of COVID-19,” King said. “By releasing our findings now, our team hopes that public health campaigns can be tailored to specific occupations with high hesitancy and address the unique safety and trust issues that these groups have.”
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