International attitudes on COVID-19 vaccination: repeat national cross-sectional surveys across 15 countries

  1. Roberto Fernandez Crespo
  2. Manar Shafat
  3. Natalie Melas-Kyriazi
  4. Lisa Gould
  5. Sarah Jones
  6. Ana Luisa Neves
  7. Melanie S Leis
  8. Hendramoorthy Maheswaran
  9. Ara Darzi

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Abstract

Objective

To examine the general public’s views around willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccines and concerns regarding their safety.

Design

Repeat cross-sectional surveys.

Setting

Online surveys in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom

Participants

National samples of adults aged >=18 years in November 2020 and January 2021.

Main outcomes measures

The proportion of adults reporting: willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccination; concern regarding side-effects from vaccinations; concerns over contraction COVID-19, and beliefs around vaccine provision in their country. Changes between the November and January surveys are also reported.

Results

Across the 15 countries, the proportion of respondents reporting they would have the COVID-19 vaccine increased from 40.7% (range: 25.0-55.1) to 55.2% (range: 34.8-77.5), proportion reporting worried about the side-effects of vaccine decreased from 53.3% (range: 42.1-66.7) to 47.9% (range: 28.0-66.1). On the second survey, willingness to receive vaccine remained low in females (49.4%, range: 30.2-79.1), aged 18-39 years (42.1%, range: 25.9-71.7), those not working or unemployed (48.9, range: 18.8-67.0), students (45.9%, range: 22.8-70.0), and those with children at home (46.5%, range: 32.4-68.9). Concerns regarding safety of vaccine remained high in females (53.7%, range: 31.8-70.4), aged 18-39 years (50.8%, range: 28.2-60.7), aged 40-64 years (51.3%, range: 30.7-68.5), those working (50.5%, range: 26.7-65.0), those not working or unemployed (53.3, range: 35.4-73.8) and those with children at home (55.8%, range: 36.5-64.7).

Conclusion

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy decreased considerably over a relatively short time coinciding with the discovery of effective vaccines. The public remain concerned about their safety, and public health messaging will need to emphasis their safety especially amongst females, parents and younger adults.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.08.21252449: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Possible limitations include the cross-sectional nature of the study, relatively small numbers surveyed in each country, predominantly high-income European countries surveyed and the use of online survey panels. These do limit the conclusions that can be drawn, especially around the casual relationship between vaccine hesitancy and concerns about their safety. In conclusion, our findings highlight the willingness of the general public to receive a vaccine is growing over time and the populations subgroups that may need to be targeted with tailored public health messaging around the benefits and safety associated with receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Although in several countries willingness to vaccinate increased considerable, in half the countries surveyed, in many population sub-groups, less than half would have a vaccine and more than half were worried about their’ side-effects. Further data is needed to understand attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines from low- and middle-income countries, especially those in South America, Middle East and Africa. Follow-up surveys will need to be undertaken in these and other countries to monitor longer term changes in public attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine if the goal of herd immunity is to be achieved.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.03.08.21252449 on medRxiv