Correlates of COVID-19 vaccination drop-out among health care workers in a tertiary Care hospital of West Bengal

Abstract

The Government of India launched “COVID-19 vaccination drive” on 16th January, 2021 and health care workers were the first to be prioritised for vaccination. However, the uncertainty regarding safety and efficacy of the vaccine was the major concern amongst them. These led to vaccine hesitancy and ultimately drop out.To estimate the proportion of drop out of COVID-19 vaccination among vaccine-hesitant health care workers (HCWs) of a tertiary care hospital and to find out their perception and other background characteristics responsible for drop out. A facility based descriptive type of observational study, cross-sectional in design was carried out among 329 HCWs of a tertiary care hospital in Kolkata from 16th March- 12thApril, 2021using a pre-designed, pre-tested, structured questionnaire. The study population selected by simple random sampling technique. Data was analysed using Microsoft Excel 2010 and SPSS v25.0 in the form of descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. About 44.1% of the study population didn’t take the COVID-19 vaccine. Socio-demographic factors like age, gender, religion, education, occupation,perception regarding necessity of vaccination, vaccine efficacy, dose and contraindication, safety in humans and role in future infections were significantly associated with drop out. There was a high proportion of vaccine drop out among health care workers. Different modifiable perceptions with socio-demographic factors had played important roles in COVID-19 vaccination drop out. As the global threat of COVID-19 continues, greater efforts through campaigns that target HCWs are needed to improve the intention of professionals’ vaccine acceptance.