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Scientists around the world continue their efforts to create a vaccine that could help fight the pandemic. But the mere development and approval of it may prove to be easier in the end than convincing people to accept the preparation.
- Confidence in vaccination will play an important role in the development of an effective COVID-19 vaccine. Scientists monitor what influences attitudes about the willingness or reluctance to vaccinate
- There has been an increase in confidence in vaccines in the European Union in recent years. In Poland, however, after initial increases, 2019 saw a significant decrease in the percentage of people who believed that vaccination is safe
- Scientists believe that implementing a vaccine can be as difficult as developing one, so public sentiment should be systematically researched and educated about vaccines
Why don’t people want to get vaccinated?
Ten years ago, an international team of scientists founded the Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP) to explain global views on vaccine safety and effectiveness. While the very administration of vaccinations is closely monitored, including by the World Health Organization, an understanding of the cultural trends behind such and no other vaccination decisions is not fully understood.
To remedy this data shortage, VCP researchers analyzed hundreds of surveys and thousands of interviews collected between 2015 and 2019, providing vital insight into vaccine beliefs for more than 284 people from 000 countries.
The results of the study provide a global understanding of increasing or decreasing confidence in the overall safety of vaccines and the perceived importance of vaccinating children. What have the scientists discovered?
In the European Union, trust in vaccines varies by country
Across the European Union, confidence in vaccines is growing in some countries, while in others it is starting to decline. Scientists give the example of Poland. Two years ago, 64 percent. Poles strongly agreed with the statement that vaccines are safe. A year later, this number dropped to 53 percent. It’s also worth noting that between 2015 and 2018, confidence in vaccines grew in order to go back to sleep in 2019.
In France, confidence in vaccines, which so far has been relatively low – only 1 in 5 people agreed with the statement that vaccines are safe, rose to almost 2019% in 33. Scientists also noticed increased confidence in vaccines in the UK, Finland, Italy and Ireland. At the end of last year’s swarm, confidence in vaccination has increased across the European Union.
In Asia, they are very cautious about vaccines
In 2015, only 2 percent. people living in Azerbaijan strongly disagreed with the statement that vaccines were safe. By the end of 2019, this number had grown to 17 percent. In Afghanistan, Indonesia and Pakistan, 1 to 2 percent. people believed that vaccines are definitely dangerous, and recently these numbers have grown to 3-4 percent. depending on the country.
VCP researchers also focused on demographic data during the study to link them to the survey results, thus allowing modeling of the relationship between vaccine confidence and factors such as religious beliefs, socioeconomic status and even sources of trust.
See also: Global Poll: s least interested in vaccinating against COVID-19. How did the Poles fare?
Who gets vaccinated more willingly and who avoids vaccines?
The links between demographic details and trust in immunization can provide healthcare professionals with a better idea of what to do to grow that trust.
Scientists have noticed, for example, that men get vaccinated less often than women. People with low education are also less likely to receive vaccines.
In countries like the Philippines, for example, the loss of confidence in vaccines has resulted from a specific event – the confusion surrounding the dengue virus vaccine Dengvaxia. Its approval in 2017 was controversial and may have caused a dramatic decline in confidence in vaccines in the Philippines. In 2015, 82 percent. Filipinos declared that they considered vaccines safe. In 2019, this result dropped to 58%.
The researchers also noted that, for example, in Indonesia, religious authorities can have a strong influence on public opinion on vaccination programs and their safety.
Trust in vaccines when children are vaccinated
Beyond the raw statistics, there are also subtle details about how these attitudes can influence behaviors, such as vaccinating children. “Our findings suggest that people do not necessarily underestimate the importance of vaccinating their children, even when they have doubts about vaccine safety,” explains Clarissa Simas, a psychologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the UK.
“The public seems to generally understand the value of vaccines, but the scientific and public health community needs to build much better public confidence in vaccine safety, especially at this time when we hope to get a COVID-19 vaccine,” she added.
Zobacz: Infectious diseases can be prevented by vaccination
Attitudes towards vaccines vary from week to week
Recent months have shown how much has changed when it comes to people’s attitudes towards vaccines. Attitudes change almost every week, with disinformation fueled by social media-driven disinformation playing a big role, and the hopes and fears of the COVID-19 vaccine competing with each other in the face of a global health disaster.
“In the event of new disease threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to regularly monitor social attitudes and quickly identify countries where confidence in vaccines is declining and try to rebuild trust there to optimize the uptake of new life-saving vaccines,” says VCP director Heidi Larson, anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
It is becoming increasingly clear that in many ways getting vaccines to their recipients can be as much a problem as creating them. There is a great need to build informed strategies for public engagement that will translate into building trust in healthcare.
The study of VCP scientists has been published in the journal “The Lancet”.
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