COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among French People Living with HIV.

Alexandre Vallée,Catherine Majerholc,Erwan Fourn,David Zucman,Pauline Touche

doi:10.3390/vaccines9040302

Abstract

People living with HIV are a high-risk population concerning the coronavirus 19 (COVID-19) infection, with a poorer prognosis. It is important to achieve high COVID-19 vaccination coverage rates in this group as soon as possible. This project used self-reporting to assess vaccine hesitancy and acceptance among people living with HIV towards the novel COVID-19 vaccine. Sixty-eight (28.7%) participants among the 237 declared their hesitancy to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Participants who expressed concerns about their health (p < 0.001), the requirement of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination (p = 0.017), and their chronic disease status (p = 0.026) were independently associated with the acceptance of vaccination. Conversely, participants presenting general vaccine refusal (p < 0.001), concerns about the serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines (p < 0.001), and those already thinking having an immune status to COVID-19 (p = 0.008) were independently associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Our results suggest that vaccine strategy would be more successful in France with a communication strategy emphasizing the collective benefits of herd immunity in the population living with HIV and reassuring patients with chronic diseases about the safety of the proposed vaccines.

Highlights

This study focuses on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and its determinants in a French population of people living with HIV
A previous study showed that 29% of the French working-age population would refuse any COVID-19 vaccine, 27% would accept COVID-19 vaccines provided in mass vaccination centers, even with less favorable characteristics and a manufacturer based in China, and 43% would remain hesitant unless COVID-19 vaccines had better characteristics or were manufactured in the USA or EU [9]
Age was not associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in our specific population of people living with HIV

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The coronavirus 19 (COVID-19) pandemic has exerted a heavy toll in terms of the burden of disease and deaths worldwide, with dozens of candidate vaccines against. As of February 2021, three COVID-19 vaccines with greater than 90% efficacy to reduce symptomatic infection risk [1,2] have been approved in the European Union, and 15 potential vaccines are in phase 3 trials [3]. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy might represent a major hurdle to achieving herd immunity [4,5,6,7]

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion