Association of COVID-19 with Vaccination Status Among Health Science College Students, University of Duhok, 2022

Abstract

Background and objectives: During the Covid-19 pandemic the community adopts several preventive measures such as; hand washing, wearing masks and social distancing whereas acquiring vaccines was considered to be the most efficient preventive measure. Therefore, this study was designed to calculate its association among health care students. Methods: A 310 students from college of health sciences/ university of Duhok participated through answering an online questioner for identifying the vaccine coverage, its efficacy through (RR) measurement and the hesitancy causes. Results: A high proportion of participants 231 out of 310 (74.5%) were registered for analysis, the vaccination coverage was low (45%) meanwhile the vaccine hesitancy was found to be high (55%) and the main cause was the side effects of the vaccines. Among 46 participants who experienced COVID-19 disease, 35(76.08%) were among those who not get vaccinated while only 11 (23.9%) were among vaccinated students; four from 46(8.6%) students were among those who got the disease before two weeks from vaccination while 7 (15.21%) were among those whose experienced the disease after two weeks from vaccination. The risk ratio or relative risk among who’s got two doses or more of vaccination was estimated to be (0.068) which is lower that among none vaccinated or vaccinated with one dose (0.164). The overall relative risk among vaccinated students was 0.414 CI: (0.183 – 0.936) with a P value < 0.05 which was statistically significant as well as the risk of infection was lowest (0.07) among who wear masks always while it was highest (0.17) among who wear masks occasionally. Conclusion: Health students are advised and encouraged to receive COVID-19 vaccination as well as to wear masks always.