Abstract
Background: Acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine will play a major role in combating the pandemic. Healthcare workers (HCWs) are among the first group to receive vaccination, so it is important to consider their attitudes about COVID-19 vaccination to better address barriers to widespread vaccination acceptance. Methods: We conducted a cross sectional study to assess the attitude of HCWs toward COVID-19 vaccination. Data were collected between 7 October and 9 November 2020. We received 4080 responses out of which 3479 were complete responses and were included in the final analysis. Results: 36% of respondents were willing to take the vaccine as soon as it became available while 56% were not sure or would wait to review more data. Only 8% of HCWs do not plan to get vaccine. Vaccine acceptance increased with increasing age, education, and income level. A smaller percentage of female (31%), Black (19%), Lantinx (30%), and rural (26%) HCWs were willing to take the vaccine as soon as it became available than the overall study population. Direct medical care providers had higher vaccine acceptance (49%). Safety (69%), effectiveness (69%), and speed of development/approval (74%) were noted as the most common concerns regarding COVID-19 vaccination in our survey.
Highlights
COVID-19 has rapidly become a major public health crisis, affecting 86.4 million individuals, and causing 1.9 million deaths globally by January of 2021
The majority of participants perceived themselves to be at risk for acquiring COVID-19 (3043, 87%) and 21% think they will acquire serious disease requiring admission to hospital
Most of the participants believed that COVID-19 vaccination should be voluntary (1665, 48%)
Summary
COVID-19 has rapidly become a major public health crisis, affecting 86.4 million individuals, and causing 1.9 million deaths globally by January of 2021. The US has reported more than 21 million cases and 357,000 deaths as of 5 January 2021 [1]. To curb this pandemic, apart from effective public health measures such as social distancing, wearing face masks, hand washing, and avoidance of crowded indoor spaces, educating the general population, efficacious vaccination is emerging as essential to mitigating disease and death [2,3,4,5,6]. The role of healthcare workers (HCWs) becomes important in advising patients and communities, and as well as through role modeling behavior.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
